Less Is (NaNoWri)Mo?
Chris Johnson
one in livejournal), and began sounding off on it-
"hey, I already write every day, I don't want to do this"
...and then I realized that my webbed-novels have been tending
towards 50K in length, and that there is no sequel for 'Aquarius' and no
plans for one and no obvious plot-lines to pursue, making a sequel for
'Aquarius' a natural choice for NaNo because there IS nothing to it,
prior to No.
...and then I did a bit of calculating and went, "NaNo is less than
1800 words a DAY?" (EVERY day, mind you, and it's unlikely there won't
be SOME days not available- like if I'm away from home)
How insane would it be to do NaNoWriMo to produce a fourth
webbed-novel and simultaneously keep writing on the for-pub novel at its
existing, usually slower pace? Has anyone done NaNo and kept up previous
daily writing committments at the same time, or is that just craziness?
Chris Johnson
m.baro
I think Nano is for those of us who aren't *really* novel writers, or
are just starting to be, or are just wanting to write a book (but can't
be arsed otherwise). I think it's quite useless for people who write
books on a regular basis, and have already gotten into the habit. But
ofcourse, if you want to tax yourself even more than you usually do,
then go for it :).
-Min
Mary Gentle
(m.baro) wrote:
I dunno, I think the idea of seeing the end of a book in a month, if you
usually take a year to get to the end of it, could be a wonderful idea...
(Mr Stross is excused this speculation. :)
Last time I did a full-tilt just-get-it-done first draft, it took four
months, but to be fair, I was averaging over the NaNo 50K-words per
month...
Mary
Alma Hromic Deckert
<suga...@emailgroups.net> wrote:
>
>I think Nano is for those of us who aren't *really* novel writers, or
>are just starting to be, or are just wanting to write a book (but can't
>be arsed otherwise). I think it's quite useless for people who write
>books on a regular basis, and have already gotten into the habit. But
>ofcourse, if you want to tax yourself even more than you usually do,
>then go for it :).
see, that's part of what *i* don't like about the whole thing. it's
for "people who are just wanting to write a book but can't be arsed
otherwise". so they can be "arsed", to put it that way, to spend a
month intensively writing 50+K of what is freely admitted to probably
be rubbish - and this entitles them to wrap the laurel of being a
"novelist" around their august heads...?
i know that there are people out there who are born writers, or who
have made themselves into writers - i have no problems with either of
those - but giving yourself carte blanche to write fifty thousand
awful words in a month - and then continue not to be arsed to write
any more but keeping the sobriquet of "novelist" ever after - is just
a boggle. from where i'm sitting, you will write a novel if you WANT
to write a novel. people have written published works sitting at the
kitchen table after midnight after the dishes have been put away and
the kids settled into their beds etc etc - chores are done and put out
of the way and then the writer who wants to write, writes. you don't
HAVE to write a novel. that's ok. you wll in fact do the world a
favour if you don't write a BAD novel, just for the hell of it. i say
that anything worth doing is worth doing well - and if it takes you a
lifetime to complete a novel than that's what the muses gave you. live
with it. you will either write or you won't; producing 50K worth of -
shall we say - less than stellar prose in a coercive atmosphere of
"You WILL do it in a month!" helps how? how would you know,
afterwards, if you were capable of producing another 50K of words
which were of a more publishable standard? and if you aren't aiming to
get published - and that's fine too, but let's get it up front - then
what's your damn hurry - you can write 50K of unpublishable words in
any given lifetime, easy, without puting yourself through the wringer
of NaNo.
but whatever rings your bells.
A.
Nicola Browne
news:qsb5pv479t6u1l72g...@4ax.com
> - you can write 50K of unpublishable words in
> any given lifetime, easy, without puting yourself through the wringer
> of NaNo.
>
> but whatever rings your bells.
>
Its probably also worth saying that some of us who do write
regularly write as if it were NaNo anyway! Writing that way works
for me and when I'm limping along as I am at the moment and not writing
fast I get v hacked off.
There are writers who write come hell or high water and those like me
who write best under some kind of pressure. My first novel was
written at a rate of 3k words a day and although with to-ing
and fro-ing back and forward to the editor it took about an aeon to
get into print, the actual writing work was done v fast and it was
fantastic fun and I don't enjoy writing in a more measured way one
little bit : )
Nicky
--
Posted via Mailgate.ORG Server - http://www.Mailgate.ORG
Chris Johnson
mary_...@cix.co.uk (Mary Gentle) wrote:
> I dunno, I think the idea of seeing the end of a book in a month, if you
> usually take a year to get to the end of it, could be a wonderful idea...
> (Mr Stross is excused this speculation. :)
>
> Last time I did a full-tilt just-get-it-done first draft, it took four
> months, but to be fair, I was averaging over the NaNo 50K-words per
> month...
>
> Mary
*snrk* but you think in doorstops, Mary- or to put it a nicer way,
you produce books that can also be used to club someone unconscious.
Isn't that a more pleasant way to think about it? ;)
Hm, possibly I'm _not_ the right guy for NaNo. For one, I would be
seeing if I can mimick Charlie Stross in some ways- churning out stuff.
For another, my unspoken expectation is that it would have to be a GOOD
novel in its context (the 'Aquarius' world, which was a good springboard
into what I'm writing now), and that frankly breaks the rules for NaNo-
if everyone tried to do that a lot of them wouldn't complete in a month,
I'd be just showing off.
I don't think 'just showing off' is the point. It's still difficult
to resist. I am as much a glory-hound as any other skiffy writer. I
guess it's just down to whether I'd be doing NaNo their way, or my way.
And if it's about FIRST novels I've already screwed that up thrice and
maybe shouldn't be muddying the waters.
Maybe I oughta just be grateful that I write every day that I'm home,
and am capable of doing that. I think I'm at slightly over book-a-year
for my output, and that's with a fair amount of back-burnering that
would not be permitted if I was being paid (yeah, I can be disciplined
when I want- some of that was because there were other tasks that WERE
paying).
It does sound fun in a crazy way, though, doesn't it?
Chris Johnson
Catja Pafort
I've signed up in the hope that it will inspire me to really apply butt
to chair. In the light of recent discoveries, I am right now doing what
I had promised myself not to do: fly-by editing.
I have one collection of scenes in the last-but-one chapter (the one
where I still thought I should come to the end as quickly as possible)
that isn't up to the usual standard. I'm ecstatic to see that the
difference exists, as I had begun to worry a bit about reading the other
340K and never thinking 'this is flat, I need to change that, that's not
quite the word I should be using.' In this section, I do, and sod that,
if I'm violating my writing technique this far in, I shall. I'll sleep
happier once the draft of this chapter is nudged up a bit.
Of course, it doesn't say anything about the quality of my prose
overall, but I fear that polishing 350K to perfection before sending it
out will be far too thankless a task. I'm just not that poetic a writer.
Maybe that will change one day, but right now, I'll settle for the same
standard of workmanship throughout.
> Last time I did a full-tilt just-get-it-done first draft, it took four
> months, but to be fair, I was averaging over the NaNo 50K-words per
> month...
Why am I not surprised?
I'm violating all rules by starting now - I don't care if I do it h.c.;
I just want to stross[1] for a bit, if I can. I can crash out later.
Catja
[1] stross, v.: to write large amounts of prose in ridiculously short
time.
m.baro
Alma Hromic Deckert wrote:
> On Sun, 19 Oct 2003 13:00:34 +0200, "m.baro"
> <suga...@emailgroups.net> wrote:
>
>
>
>>I think Nano is for those of us who aren't *really* novel writers, or
>>are just starting to be, or are just wanting to write a book (but can't
>>be arsed otherwise). I think it's quite useless for people who write
>>books on a regular basis, and have already gotten into the habit. But
>>ofcourse, if you want to tax yourself even more than you usually do,
>>then go for it :).
>
>
>
> see, that's part of what *i* don't like about the whole thing. it's
> for "people who are just wanting to write a book but can't be arsed
> otherwise". so they can be "arsed", to put it that way, to spend a
> month intensively writing 50+K of what is freely admitted to probably
> be rubbish - and this entitles them to wrap the laurel of being a
> "novelist" around their august heads...?
*Gasps and points* Snob! :)
I think you're taking it seriously. I doubt anyone (who is doing it to
see if they can actually do 50k words in a given time) who succeeds
actually tout themselves as a novelist (unless they're already
professional writers), unless they're really full of themselves.
Besides, the 50K is just a word count a not necessarily a finished document.
> i know that there are people out there who are born writers, or who
> have made themselves into writers - i have no problems with either of
> those - but giving yourself carte blanche to write fifty thousand
> awful words in a month - and then continue not to be arsed to write
> any more but keeping the sobriquet of "novelist" ever after - is just
> a boggle.
Nah, I think most people who don't have any intentions of being a writer
would merely claim "You know, I once wrote 50k words in a month!". One
of the reasons people do the NaNoWriMo is to get that idea or story they
kind of have had in their heads. The Nano thing is just an excuse to go
ahead and do it especially since there's thousands of other people doing
it at exactly the same time as you. The competition helps too, even if
there is no prize at the end.
> from where i'm sitting, you will write a novel if you WANT
> to write a novel. people have written published works sitting at the
> kitchen table after midnight after the dishes have been put away and
> the kids settled into their beds etc etc - chores are done and put out
> of the way and then the writer who wants to write, writes. you don't
> HAVE to write a novel. that's ok. you wll in fact do the world a
> favour if you don't write a BAD novel, just for the hell of it. i say
> that anything worth doing is worth doing well
I completely disagree with you there. Someone might want to write a
novel, but don't think they're capable enough. Others just want to see
if they can write faster. Again, knowing that there's thousands of
people (most of whom are not novelists) involved at the same time helps.
It has become a community activity, like friday night Karaoke. You do it
for fun, whether or not you can sing.
> - and if it takes you a
> lifetime to complete a novel than that's what the muses gave you. live
> with it. you will either write or you won't; producing 50K worth of -
> shall we say - less than stellar prose in a coercive atmosphere of
> "You WILL do it in a month!" helps how? how would you know,
> afterwards, if you were capable of producing another 50K of words
> which were of a more publishable standard?
If you have done the 50k, then you've done it. And if, in the end, you
have a publishable novel, then good for you. And if the participants
wish to write more, then they will be able to their time/quality quotas.
> and if you aren't aiming to
> get published - and that's fine too, but let's get it up front - then
> what's your damn hurry - you can write 50K of unpublishable words in
> any given lifetime, easy, without puting yourself through the wringer
> of NaNo.
For the heck of it. Nothing wrong with that. Haven't you ever done the
"last one to get to the door is a rotten egg" run? Or Karaoke for
example. The idea might mortify me (and I can't sing to save my life),
but if a friend dared me or called me chicken, you can bet I'll go up on
stage and sing along to a Britney Spears' song.
-Min
m.baro
Mary Gentle wrote:
> Last time I did a full-tilt just-get-it-done first draft, it took four
> months, but to be fair, I was averaging over the NaNo 50K-words per
> month...
You doing Nano would be unfair- like a professional singer doing karaoke
and making the rest of us looking positively bad. :)
-Min
Eric Jarvis
I've been a professional singer. I've done karaoke once. It was enormously
difficult and I hated it. That backing tape simply doesn't LISTEN. If it
had been in my band I'd have sacked the blighter.
--
eric
www.ericjarvis.co.uk
all these years I've waited for the revolution
and all we end up getting is spin
m.baro
Eric Jarvis wrote:
> m.baro wrote:
>
>>
>>Mary Gentle wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>>Last time I did a full-tilt just-get-it-done first draft, it took four
>>>months, but to be fair, I was averaging over the NaNo 50K-words per
>>>month...
>>
>>You doing Nano would be unfair- like a professional singer doing karaoke
>>and making the rest of us looking positively bad. :)
>>
>
>
> I've been a professional singer. I've done karaoke once. It was enormously
> difficult and I hated it. That backing tape simply doesn't LISTEN. If it
> had been in my band I'd have sacked the blighter.
You OBVIOUSLY chose the wrong song to karaoke to :).
Brian M. Scott
(Catja Pafort) wrote:
[...]
>I just want to stross[1] for a bit, if I can. I can crash out later.
Ah, that'll be when you're strossed out and *really* need to
relax.
[...]
Brian
Marilee J. Layman
wrote:
>m.baro wrote:
>>
>>
>> Mary Gentle wrote:
>>
>>
>> > Last time I did a full-tilt just-get-it-done first draft, it took four
>> > months, but to be fair, I was averaging over the NaNo 50K-words per
>> > month...
>>
>> You doing Nano would be unfair- like a professional singer doing karaoke
>> and making the rest of us looking positively bad. :)
>>
>
>I've been a professional singer. I've done karaoke once. It was enormously
>difficult and I hated it. That backing tape simply doesn't LISTEN. If it
>had been in my band I'd have sacked the blighter.
LOL Annoying, isn't it? It doesn't feel where you want to bend the
rhythm a bit, emphasize something else. Yeah, karaoke drives me nuts.
--
Marilee J. Layman
Handmade Bali Sterling Beads at Wholesale
http://www.basicbali.com
Eric Jarvis
> On Sun, 19 Oct 2003 20:16:44 +0100, Eric Jarvis <w...@ericjarvis.co.uk>
> wrote:
>
> >m.baro wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >> Mary Gentle wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >> > Last time I did a full-tilt just-get-it-done first draft, it took four
> >> > months, but to be fair, I was averaging over the NaNo 50K-words per
> >> > month...
> >>
> >> You doing Nano would be unfair- like a professional singer doing karaoke
> >> and making the rest of us looking positively bad. :)
> >>
> >
> >I've been a professional singer. I've done karaoke once. It was enormously
> >difficult and I hated it. That backing tape simply doesn't LISTEN. If it
> >had been in my band I'd have sacked the blighter.
>
> LOL Annoying, isn't it? It doesn't feel where you want to bend the
> rhythm a bit, emphasize something else. Yeah, karaoke drives me nuts.
>
The only thing anywhere near as hard is working with classically trained
singers or musicians. I started with blues. I see a time signature as a
vague suggestion and a melody as sort of a guideline. :)
--
eric
www.ericjarvis.co.uk
"live fast, die only if strictly necessary"
Irina Rempt
> The only thing anywhere near as hard is working with classically
> trained singers or musicians. I started with blues. I see a time
> signature as a vague suggestion and a melody as sort of a guideline.
> :)
Oh, yes. We have the same problem with conservatory-trained singers in
the church choir. They want to count and to sing the pitch that's in
the book, instead of singing the natural rhythm of the words and the
pitch you get from the priest or the reader. What's written is only an
imperfect memory aid.
Irina
--
Vesta veran, terna puran, farenin. http://www.valdyas.org/irina/
Beghinnen can ick, volherden will' ick, volbringhen sal ick.
http://www.valdyas.org/~irina/foundobjects/ Latest: 11-May-2003
Neil Barnes
news:qpt5pvc17iqp9pm4k...@4ax.com:
> Yeah,
> karaoke drives me nuts.
>
Me too. When they turn on the machine, I leave.
Neil
--
note - the email address in this message is valid but the
signal to noise ratio approaches -40dB. A more useful address
is a similar account at ntlworld-fullstop-com.
Mary Gentle
(Alma Hromic Deckert) wrote:
[...]
> producing 50K worth of -
> shall we say - less than stellar prose in a coercive atmosphere of
> "You WILL do it in a month!" helps how?
For people who haven't done it, it probably gets over the "but I can't do
anything as long as a novel" lump.
Okay, 50K isn't a novel, but if you can do a 50K story, you might not be
freaked out by 80-90K as a concept. And most people's first 50K are well
worth throwing away, so I don't know that it matters that it's crap. A
month isn't a long time to spend getting over stage-fright.
And it's going to leave a number of people thinking "shit, that's hard
work!" at the end of it, and that's no bad thing to realise early on,
either.
But then, I'm not adverse to the writing of a zeroth draft, either, which
isn't that far from the same thing...
Mary
John F. Eldredge
Hash: SHA1
On 19 Oct 2003 21:31:11 GMT, Neil Barnes
<nailed_...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>Marilee J. Layman <mjla...@erols.com> wrote in
>news:qpt5pvc17iqp9pm4k...@4ax.com:
>
>> Yeah,
>> karaoke drives me nuts.
>>
>
>Me too. When they turn on the machine, I leave.
>
>Neil
There also seems to be an inverse relationship, where the person with
the worst singing-voice is the one most inclined to get up and
perform. One of my co-workers jokes that "karaoke" is Japanese for
"tone-deaf drunk".
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--
John F. Eldredge -- jo...@jfeldredge.com
PGP key available from http://pgp.mit.edu
"Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better
than not to think at all." -- Hypatia of Alexandria
m.baro
John F. Eldredge wrote:
> One of my co-workers jokes that "karaoke" is Japanese for
> "tone-deaf drunk".
Which is the only state I'd be in if I'm to be caught dead singing in
public.
-Min
Marilee J. Layman
wrote:
>Marilee J. Layman wrote:
>> On Sun, 19 Oct 2003 20:16:44 +0100, Eric Jarvis <w...@ericjarvis.co.uk>
>> wrote:
>>
>> >m.baro wrote:
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> Mary Gentle wrote:
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> > Last time I did a full-tilt just-get-it-done first draft, it took four
>> >> > months, but to be fair, I was averaging over the NaNo 50K-words per
>> >> > month...
>> >>
>> >> You doing Nano would be unfair- like a professional singer doing karaoke
>> >> and making the rest of us looking positively bad. :)
>> >>
>> >
>> >I've been a professional singer. I've done karaoke once. It was enormously
>> >difficult and I hated it. That backing tape simply doesn't LISTEN. If it
>> >had been in my band I'd have sacked the blighter.
>>
>> LOL Annoying, isn't it? It doesn't feel where you want to bend the
>> rhythm a bit, emphasize something else. Yeah, karaoke drives me nuts.
>>
>
>The only thing anywhere near as hard is working with classically trained
>singers or musicians. I started with blues. I see a time signature as a
>vague suggestion and a melody as sort of a guideline. :)
It's pretty much impossible to major in music without becoming
classically trained. Fortunately, I had lots of early exposure to
folk and blues and jazz and I didn't lose that.
Zeborah
> In article <memo.2003101...@roxanne.morgan.ntlworld.com>,
> mary_...@cix.co.uk (Mary Gentle) wrote:
> > Last time I did a full-tilt just-get-it-done first draft, it took four
> > months, but to be fair, I was averaging over the NaNo 50K-words per
> > month...
>
> *snrk* but you think in doorstops, Mary- or to put it a nicer way,
> you produce books that can also be used to club someone unconscious.
Hey, that's *my* plot point!
<pause>
Oh, you were just being facetious, right? Oops. Forget I said
anything...
Oh, well, okay. Mary, would you have any great objection to a certain
heroine of mine, who is ignobly locked into a library, taking up the
largest book she can find, which happens to be obscurely titled
_Fraxinus_, and standing by the doorway ready to bop the head of the
next person to come in? Until her arms get sore, anyway.
Or I could call it Oak: One Arcane K... K...
Grr.
Zeborah
(Kronography!)
--
Kangaroo Story wordcount: 40444 words
Mary Gentle
zeb...@netaccess.co.nz (Zeborah) wrote:
> Chris Johnson <jinx...@sover.net> wrote:
>
> > In article <memo.2003101...@roxanne.morgan.ntlworld.com>,
> > mary_...@cix.co.uk (Mary Gentle) wrote:
> > > Last time I did a full-tilt just-get-it-done first draft, it took
> > > four
> > > months, but to be fair, I was averaging over the NaNo 50K-words per
> > > month...
> >
> > *snrk* but you think in doorstops, Mary- or to put it a nicer way,
> > you produce books that can also be used to club someone unconscious.
>
> Hey, that's *my* plot point!
<snicker>
> <pause>
>
> Oh, you were just being facetious, right? Oops. Forget I said
> anything...
>
> Oh, well, okay. Mary, would you have any great objection to a certain
> heroine of mine, who is ignobly locked into a library, taking up the
> largest book she can find, which happens to be obscurely titled
> _Fraxinus_, and standing by the doorway ready to bop the head of the
> next person to come in? Until her arms get sore, anyway.
No objection - I'd be flattered, and so would she. <g>
> Or I could call it Oak: One Arcane K... K...
>
> Grr.
>
> Zeborah
> (Kronography!)
Katastrophe?
Mary
Mary Gentle
(m.baro) wrote:
Nobody lets me have any fun!
Poot. :)
Mary
Brian M. Scott
>> Chris Johnson <jinx...@sover.net> wrote:
><snicker>
>> <pause>
>> Grr.
>> Zeborah
>> (Kronography!)
>Katastrophe?
Kaleidoscope. In which history is broken and reformed and broken
and reformed and ...
Brian
Eric Jarvis
> On Sun, 19 Oct 2003 22:10:43 +0100, Eric Jarvis <w...@ericjarvis.co.uk>
> wrote:
> >Marilee J. Layman wrote:
> >> On Sun, 19 Oct 2003 20:16:44 +0100, Eric Jarvis <w...@ericjarvis.co.uk>
> >> wrote:
> >> >m.baro wrote:
> >> >> Mary Gentle wrote:
> >> >>
> >> >> > Last time I did a full-tilt just-get-it-done first draft, it took four
> >> >> > months, but to be fair, I was averaging over the NaNo 50K-words per
> >> >> > month...
> >> >>
> >> >> You doing Nano would be unfair- like a professional singer doing karaoke
> >> >> and making the rest of us looking positively bad. :)
> >> >
> >> >I've been a professional singer. I've done karaoke once. It was enormously
> >> >difficult and I hated it. That backing tape simply doesn't LISTEN. If it
> >> >had been in my band I'd have sacked the blighter.
> >>
> >> LOL Annoying, isn't it? It doesn't feel where you want to bend the
> >> rhythm a bit, emphasize something else. Yeah, karaoke drives me nuts.
> >
> >The only thing anywhere near as hard is working with classically trained
> >singers or musicians. I started with blues. I see a time signature as a
> >vague suggestion and a melody as sort of a guideline. :)
>
> It's pretty much impossible to major in music without becoming
> classically trained. Fortunately, I had lots of early exposure to
> folk and blues and jazz and I didn't lose that.
>
It works in different ways for different people, but as far as I can see
at the top of any field of music are the people who can marry strong
technique with the ability to totally disregard what was actually written
by the composer.
I got chucked out of the school choir after my first practise and ditched
piano lessons after a couple of weeks. My brother trained classically up
to an MA.
I bought a guitar with my first wage packet and was roped into joining in
floor spots at the college folk club [1] doing folky versions of punk
songs, punky versions of folk songs and bluesy versions of anything that
wasn't nailed down. My brother attempted to join an orchestra but was
turned down by all of them since he wasn't deemed tohave the potential to
ever be a soloist, and you don't play french horn in an orchestra unless
you can eventually be first horn.
I fronted an R&B band for a couple of years in College and then joined a
fairly serious jazz/punk/soul band that did OK for a while. My brother
joined the C of E and was eventually ordained.
Playing with old jazz players meant I had to learn a lot of technique and
theory. Playing in church meant my brother had to throw away a lot of his
reliance on theory. I think we are both pretty good now. :)
Mary Gentle
(Brian M. Scott) wrote:
Oh, /yes.../ Pardon me while I squirrel that away. You never know
what'll come in useful sometime. :)
Mary
Anna Mazzoldi
Not me. I seem to have anti-stage-fright. When I get on stage, I switch:
I'm not there, the audience is not there, I have to ask someone else how I
did when I'm finished.
This helped a lot with the concert last Saturday. I had managed to catch a
cold. Before the concert I had little voice and so I was terrified; after
the concert I had almost no voice (only recovering it now); during the
concert I sang very well, according to the director who should know because
he's a real musician ;-). And that was just as well because our choir is
very short on men, two of whom had just left us, and so I was one of the
only two tenors left in the choir, so I couldn't have cheated... (Didn't
stop me from missing the beat for the start of my part in a madrigal. The
other tenor missed it too. We just hadn't practised it enough before the
concert. But hadn't it been for reverse-stage-fright, I'm sure I would have
frozen at that point: instead I picked it up again fairly rapidly, and got
to the end of the song as if nothing had happened -- I doubt many people in
the audience noticed anything wrong.)
Very useful thing: I've always had it, and I don't know where it comes
from.
--
Anna Mazzoldi
"Why did the chicken cross the road?"
Karl Marx: "It was a historical inevitability."
Irina Rempt
> Not me. I seem to have anti-stage-fright. When I get on stage, I
> switch: I'm not there, the audience is not there, I have to ask
> someone else how I did when I'm finished.
I have to make a false start to get rid of the stage fright; after I've
done that, I'm perfectly all right. This goes even for things like
teaching the first class in a series, or GMing for strangers.
Charlton Wilbur
mb> Mary Gentle wrote:
>> Last time I did a full-tilt just-get-it-done first draft, it
>> took four months, but to be fair, I was averaging over the NaNo
>> 50K-words per month...
mb> You doing Nano would be unfair- like a professional singer
mb> doing karaoke and making the rest of us looking positively
mb> bad. :)
Of course, for Mary, the goal is 500,000 words in a month....
Charlton
(who expects she could do it)
--
cwilbur at chromatico dot net
cwilbur at mac dot com
Zara Baxter
wrote:
>On Mon, 20 Oct 2003 03:31:24 +0200, m.baro wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> John F. Eldredge wrote:
>>
>>> One of my co-workers jokes that "karaoke" is Japanese for
>>> "tone-deaf drunk".
>>
>> Which is the only state I'd be in if I'm to be caught dead singing in
>> public.
>
>Not me. I seem to have anti-stage-fright. When I get on stage, I switch:
>I'm not there, the audience is not there, I have to ask someone else how I
>did when I'm finished.
Oh me too! I also have it when giving lectures to university students
- apparently my brain thinks that's a performance too. Groups less
than 30 don't trigger it though.
>Very useful thing: I've always had it, and I don't know where it comes
>from.
=)
Zara
Heather Jones
>
> On Thu, 23 Oct 2003 10:27:03 +0100, Anna Mazzoldi <AnnaU...@iol.ie>
> wrote:
>
> >On Mon, 20 Oct 2003 03:31:24 +0200, m.baro wrote:
> >
> >>
> >>
> >> John F. Eldredge wrote:
> >>
> >>> One of my co-workers jokes that "karaoke" is Japanese for
> >>> "tone-deaf drunk".
> >>
> >> Which is the only state I'd be in if I'm to be caught dead singing in
> >> public.
> >
> >Not me. I seem to have anti-stage-fright. When I get on stage, I switch:
> >I'm not there, the audience is not there, I have to ask someone else how I
> >did when I'm finished.
>
> Oh me too! I also have it when giving lectures to university students
> - apparently my brain thinks that's a performance too. Groups less
> than 30 don't trigger it though.
I have the same connection between lecture and performance
stage-fright, but fortunately it works in the opposite direction:
massive experience in lecturing has desensitized my on-stage
nerves considerably.
Heather
--
*****
Heather Rose Jones
hrj...@socrates.berkeley.edu
*****
Brian M. Scott
<hrj...@socrates.berkeley.edu> wrote:
[...]
>I have the same connection between lecture and performance
>stage-fright, but fortunately it works in the opposite direction:
>massive experience in lecturing has desensitized my on-stage
>nerves considerably.
I've never had a problem getting up in front of a classroom full
of students, but I'm still not terribly happy in many other
on-stage settings. The crucial question seems to be whether I'm
truly confident that I know what I'm doing; if so, I'm fine, and
if not, not.
Brian
Mary Gentle
cwi...@mithril.chromatico.net (Charlton Wilbur) wrote:
> >>>>> "mb" == m baro <suga...@emailgroups.net> writes:
>
> mb> Mary Gentle wrote:
>
>
> >> Last time I did a full-tilt just-get-it-done first draft, it
> >> took four months, but to be fair, I was averaging over the NaNo
> >> 50K-words per month...
>
>
> mb> You doing Nano would be unfair- like a professional singer
> mb> doing karaoke and making the rest of us looking positively
> mb> bad. :)
>
> Of course, for Mary, the goal is 500,000 words in a month....
<whimper!>
> Charlton
> (who expects she could do it)
Most of them would be 'the', 'and', and 'but'. <g>
Mary
m.baro
Mary Gentle wrote:
>>
>>Of course, for Mary, the goal is 500,000 words in a month....
>
>
> <whimper!>
>
>
>>Charlton
>>(who expects she could do it)
>
>
> Most of them would be 'the', 'and', and 'but'. <g>
>
Make us a pie chart, Mary :).
-Min
m.baro
I have no problems with public speaking- or acting in plays. The last
time I did some public speaking was introducing an Indian dance troupe
to a large crowd of Slovaks. I even managed to pull off the phrase "gay
abandon" without giggling.
Singing, on the otherhand... *shudders*
-Min
Joann Zimmerman
says...
> I've never had a problem getting up in front of a classroom full
> of students, but I'm still not terribly happy in many other
> on-stage settings. The crucial question seems to be whether I'm
> truly confident that I know what I'm doing; if so, I'm fine, and
> if not, not.
Reverse for me, at least in lecture format as compared to discussion
sections. I got over it by humming opera overtures[*] on the way into
the classroom, which got me into an "on-stage" mindset, and there I was,
doing a performance instead of a lecture. Worked a treat.
[*] I spent a fair amount of time in the 80s as a chorus member in an
opera company. Along about the second dress rehearsal before my first
performance, I realized that the overture was not there only to calm the
audience down and set the scene for them, but also to provide a sort of
time machine for the performers.
--
"I never understood people who don't have bookshelves."
--George Plimpton
Joann Zimmerman jz...@bellereti.com
Quadpus
>
> see, that's part of what *i* don't like about the whole thing. it's
> for "people who are just wanting to write a book but can't be arsed
> otherwise". so they can be "arsed", to put it that way, to spend a
> month intensively writing 50+K of what is freely admitted to probably
> be rubbish - and this entitles them to wrap the laurel of being a
> "novelist" around their august heads...?
This morning, I came upon some bloggery on the subject of NNWM, with a
link to a message board where some people were taking very very great
personal offense at an article you wrote about NNWM last year.
The way these people were acting, you'd think your article had grown
limbs, walked over to their houses, strangled their pets, salted their
flowerbeds, and puked on their doorsteps. It was ugly and stupid
enough to motivate me to look and see if you happened to be talking
about it here on rasc, just so I could say, right on, Alma.
Right on, Alma.
What is it about the concept of writing 50k words in one month that
people hold so dear? Why should anyone care if another writer
criticizes its usefulness as a writing exercise?
I am perplexed.
Elizabeth Shack
> Reverse for me, at least in lecture format as compared to discussion
> sections. I got over it by humming opera overtures[*] on the way into
> the classroom, which got me into an "on-stage" mindset, and there I was,
> doing a performance instead of a lecture. Worked a treat.
Hm. Never tried that one.
I can give talks; it's answering questions and being interrupted I can't
deal with. Even when I know the answer. Hopefully now I'm in a job where
I'll never have to do it again.
--
Elizabeth Shack eashack at earthlink dot ent
http://home.earthlink.net/~eashack
boringblog at http://www.livejournal.com/users/eashack/
Marilee J. Layman
<eashac...@earthlink.ENT> wrote:
>On Fri, 24 Oct 2003 10:54:44 -0500, Joann Zimmerman wrote:
>
>> Reverse for me, at least in lecture format as compared to discussion
>> sections. I got over it by humming opera overtures[*] on the way into
>> the classroom, which got me into an "on-stage" mindset, and there I was,
>> doing a performance instead of a lecture. Worked a treat.
>
>Hm. Never tried that one.
>
>I can give talks; it's answering questions and being interrupted I can't
>deal with. Even when I know the answer. Hopefully now I'm in a job where
>I'll never have to do it again.
Ha! I managed to hold a homeowner's meeting on topic while a woman
walked down the aisle shouting that she was going to kill me. (Two of
the guys stepped out to block her and she went back to her seat.) I
will admit, I was flailing like crazy under the calm assurance.
Mary Gentle
Mary Gentle
(Quadpus) wrote:
> Alma Hromic Deckert <ang...@vaxer.net> wrote:
> >
> > see, that's part of what *i* don't like about the whole thing. it's
> > for "people who are just wanting to write a book but can't be arsed
> > otherwise". so they can be "arsed", to put it that way, to spend a
> > month intensively writing 50+K of what is freely admitted to probably
> > be rubbish - and this entitles them to wrap the laurel of being a
> > "novelist" around their august heads...?
>
> This morning, I came upon some bloggery on the subject of NNWM, with a
> link to a message board where some people were taking very very great
> personal offense at an article you wrote about NNWM last year.
>
> The way these people were acting, you'd think your article had grown
> limbs, walked over to their houses, strangled their pets, salted their
> flowerbeds, and puked on their doorsteps.
Wow. <envy>
>It was ugly and stupid
> enough to motivate me to look and see if you happened to be talking
> about it here on rasc, just so I could say, right on, Alma.
>
> Right on, Alma.
>
> What is it about the concept of writing 50k words in one month that
> people hold so dear? Why should anyone care if another writer
> criticizes its usefulness as a writing exercise?
>
> I am perplexed.
Did anyone in the blogging happen to /say/ in what way their cats had been
pissed on? I confess I'm curious, now.
Is it - alternatives springing to my mind - a difference between people
writing for writing's sake, and people writing for publication? People
writing for therapy, and people writing for the story's sake? Those
things could give you the graunch! of different worldviews colliding.
Being on the side of 'publication' and 'serve the story', it's not going
to bother me if someone writes 50K of rubbish and announces they're a
novelist, if by 'novelist' they mean 'I wrote this amount of story, for my
own pleasure/psychological profit/as a writing exercise'. We just have
two different definitions of novelist.
If they mean by my definition of novelist, I'm just going to snicker,
frankly...
Mary
Catja Pafort
> What is it about the concept of writing 50k words in one month that
> people hold so dear? Why should anyone care if another writer
> criticizes its usefulness as a writing exercise?
Several things come to my mind.
For many, it seems, finishing NaNoWriMo is about a dream. It takes them
one step closer from 'one day, I shall write a novel' to 'I have written
a novel' and it doesn't matter whether the novel stinks, because that is
not the point. (It probably will stink. First efforts seem to, as there
are a lot of skills that you can only pick up and hone if you _are_
writing; and others the majority of even well-read folks are not aware
off at all; so the first effort at novel length of almost any writer is
likely to be less than stellar. With the appropriate help and polishing
and outside input, they have at least a good chance to get better.)
And it's a support group filling a particular niche - for writers who
feel that their major challenge is actually sitting down and _writing
it_; and they're among other people who struggle with exactly the same
problem; not writing enough words. An outsider critisizing them for 'not
doing A, B, or C' misses the point, because right now they don't care
about ABC, they care about X, which is wordcount.
Many will sit down and admit that plotting, characterisation and
worldbuilding are _important_, and now that they have proven to
themselves that they _can_ write 50K/a novel it's time to concentrate on
those. Others might rely on 'having written a novel' and now that it's
out of their systems, shall never pursue the idea of novel-writing
again.
I leave it to the gentle readers to form their own opinions. I know
that, quite apart from its qualities, having finished the first novel
was an important milestone.
Catja
(And now, can you please point me towards the discussion places in
question? I like controversy, with salt, no vinegar please)
Alma Hromic Deckert
Gentle) wrote:
>In article <3udjpvsjs5pfk3o9u...@4ax.com>, qua...@yahoo.com
>(Quadpus) wrote:
>
>> The way these people were acting, you'd think your article had grown
>> limbs, walked over to their houses, strangled their pets, salted their
>> flowerbeds, and puked on their doorsteps.
>
>Wow. <envy>
>
my article or Q's formulation of its actions? <G>
A.
Brooks Moses
> In article <3udjpvsjs5pfk3o9u...@4ax.com>, qua...@yahoo.com
> (Quadpus) wrote:
> > Right on, Alma.
> >
> > What is it about the concept of writing 50k words in one month that
> > people hold so dear? Why should anyone care if another writer
> > criticizes its usefulness as a writing exercise?
> >
> > I am perplexed.
>
> Did anyone in the blogging happen to /say/ in what way their cats had been
> pissed on? I confess I'm curious, now.
From what I remember (assuming I saw the same things), they were mainly
upset that someone was taking seriously the "you can be snide to
professional novelists who take six months to write a book, and brag
about being a novelist at cocktail parties" part of the NaNoWriMo page
(a part that's alleged to exist; mind you, I haven't _read_ the thing,
I'm waiting for the play to come out).... But I didn't read it in that
much detail.
Link, in case you want to read it yourself:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/browngirl/496315.html
- Brooks
--
The "bmoses-nospam" address is valid; no unmunging needed.
Quadpus
>
> Did anyone in the blogging happen to /say/ in what way their cats had been
> pissed on? I confess I'm curious, now.
It was mostly along the lines of "who are you to tell me when/how I
can call myself a Real Novelist," with what seemed to be a smattering
of outrage that anyone would dare to attack the NNWM concept itself --
and that's the part that puzzled me. As to the first, well, isn't 50k
really more the length of a novella, anyway?
> Is it - alternatives springing to my mind - a difference between people
> writing for writing's sake, and people writing for publication? People
> writing for therapy, and people writing for the story's sake? Those
> things could give you the graunch! of different worldviews colliding.
The site seemed to be geared towards the latter.
Mary Gentle
(Alma Hromic Deckert) wrote:
Both, now you mention it, but the article in the first instance. :)
Mary
Elizabeth Shack
> Did anyone in the blogging happen to /say/ in what way their cats had been
> pissed on? I confess I'm curious, now.
I don't know where Quadpus was reading, but I ran across some recent
comments on the article as well. Complaints were partly about the tone
(arrogant), partly about her missing the point (it's not *supposed* to be
for published writers to write something and mail it off at the end of the
month, it's for people who are stuck at the putting pen to paper for the
first time stage, or for people who want to write faster than they have
been, and they know they'll have to revise it).
Much of the reaction was over-reaction or missing the point of her article;
some of it I agreed with (the definition of novelist, frex).
> Is it - alternatives springing to my mind - a difference between people
> writing for writing's sake, and people writing for publication? People
> writing for therapy, and people writing for the story's sake?
Not where I was reading.
Irina Rempt
> I can give talks; it's answering questions and being interrupted I
> can't deal with.
Whereas I can answer questions (extensively), but I can't do the
introduction that makes it possible for people to ask questions. Even
in the little kids' church-school class I start by prompting them
whether they already know something about <subject> and if anyone has a
question, in order to give me a handle.
Mary Gentle
bmoses...@cits1.stanford.edu (Brooks Moses) wrote:
Reading through that...
Good grief: for something that's supposed to be good-humoured
play-writing/writing-exercise, there are a whole slew of people there who
jump up in the air when a published writer expresses her opinion. And
who then proceed to be snide about the concept of writing for a living.
Touchy, much?
I took the NaNoWriMo page -- which I read last year; must check and see if
it's different this year -- as being in fun, but it does look like there's
some people who want to say 'I write, I'm not published, I'm never going
to /be/ published, but I'm just like a published writer all the same'.
Well, no.
Alma's "self-delusional at best, a flat out lie at worst" isn't the most
tactful way of putting this, but it's accurate. There are a lot of things
you can be at 50K-per-November -- writer for fun, writer for therapy,
writer as exercise, writer-in-training -- but 'the same as a published
writer' isn't one of them. Otherwise all the successful NaNoWriMo-ists
who wanted to would have contracts and publication dates.
However, to be fair, NaNoWriMo didn't invent pretentious twats, and
pretentious twats will be around long after NaNoWriMo's gone. I can't
help feeling that someone who writes a bad 50K and calls themselves a
novelist only contributes in a very minor way to the 'invisibility of
work' that the profession is stuck with.
It looks to me as if '50K of crap' is the equivalent technique to the
'shitty first draft' -- it'll suit some people; it won't suit others; it's
probably (hmm - possibly) less likely to screw up one's writing than not
writing at all. Although I wouldn't mind seeing
'December50KRevisionMonth' added to NaNoWriMo...
Okay, let's have a look at this year's page:
>National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to
>novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to
>write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30.
Eh. That /is/ misleading, because I don't think there's anywhere now that
you can sell 50K-words as a novel. Even if you're doing it for fun, you
ought to be aware that you're writing a longish novella, and maybe be
aware that it's not very publishable, if that's important to you.
Then again, the realistic thing would be "write a 100,000-word novel".
Which would necessitate NaNo-DecWri2Mo. And I doubt a majority of the
interested people are going to do burst-writing at that pace for two
months on the trot, possible though it is.
So, yeah. You're not writing a novel, but the 'frame' gives you no way to
call it anything else. I think that is a problem.
>Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over talent and craft, NaNoWriMo is a
>novel-writing program for everyone who has thought fleetingly about
>writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved.
There's two ways of looking at that one. Getting over the bump of 'stage
fright', that's fine. Being scared of the time and effort...
If 30 days producing a crap 50K words has convinced you that the time and
effort required is less than you feared, chances are you're going to be in
deep, deep shit.
There are more people who produce good novels in 12 months+ than there are
who do it in -6 weeks; it's doing no one any favours to think they'll be
the latter if they're the former. Which means a small number of people
will be okay, and a large number will go CRUNCH against a brick wall if
they ever try writing 100K-words that isn't 'shitty first draft'.
I dunno, maybe I'm over-estimating the effect that expectation will have
on people?
>Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in
>NaNoWriMo is output. It's all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze
>approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on
>the fly.
This is going to help a mistaken perfectionist who needs to write a shitty
first draft. I suspect it's going to badly hurt the writer who genuinely
needs to have one page right before they move onto the next. Then again,
I guess those writers may not try it... but you can't be sure of that.
>Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap. And that's a good
>thing. By forcing yourself to write so intensely, you are giving yourself
>permission to make mistakes. To forgo the endless tweaking and editing
>and just create. To build without tearing down.
And that's just 'turn off the internal editor'.
But, again, it assumes that everybody who signs up for NaNoWriMo needs
their internal editor thwacked with a big stick. Some people need to
nurture their editor, on account of same editor badly needs to get a look
in.
I have a feeling the prescriptiveness could do a lot more harm than what's
actually being prescribed. It doesn't hurt to find out if you should turn
your internal editor off. It may well hurt to be told you /have/ to do
it, to achieve your 50K in the month.
>As you spend November writing, you can draw comfort from the fact that,
>all around the world, other National Novel Writing Month participants are
>going through the same joys and sorrows of producing the Great Frantic
>Novel. Wrimos meet throughout the month to offer encouragement,
>commiseration, and -- when the thing is done -- the kind of raucous
>celebrations that tend to frighten animals and small children.
That's an innocent little paragraph, and I think it's the most misleading
of all.
Leave out the people who write for fun and therapy; take the people who
are doing it because they want to write a novel that will be published.
And then another novel. And another novel after that.
Okay: don't get to like the company.
In some ways, I think that's the most insidious problem with NaNoWriMo.
Anybody can write with a cheer-leader squad, even if it's one they're part
of.
It's not going to be like NaNoWriMo, when you set out to do something that
lasts more than a month, and is as long as a novel. It's going to involve
giving up raucous celebrations, more than it's going to involve taking
part in them. The biggest part of writing is done on your own, alone;
inside your own head if (like Jane Austen) you don't have a room of your
own. And if you don't have some capacity for liking your own company, and
being content spending long hours alone at the keyboard or notebook,
writing's going to drive you /nuts./
(Which is why writers, like most people who work from home, tend to end up
arranging life to _have_ a social life. And arranging part of it to be
with other writers, for necessary shop-talk.)
>In 2002, we had about 14,000 participants. Over 2100 of them crossed the
>50k finish line by the midnight deadline, entering into the annals of
>NaNoWriMo superstardom forever. They started the month as auto mechanics,
>out-of-work actors, and middle school English teachers. They walked away
>novelists.
No.
No, they really didn't. If they wrote a first draft that was publishable,
in that time, they wrote a novella.
And a 50K story doesn't work the way a 90K+ story works, and they've got
that to learn.
And, for most, a first draft isn't a finished draft; they've got that to
learn. And maybe it's more than one more draft: maybe it's a third, and a
fourth, and a fifth. And the next novel after that.
And then, as Alma said, there's the traipsing round publishers and agents,
trying to get blood out of a sequence of highly uncooperative stones;
they've got that to experience, yet. Because almost anybody can put a few
words down on paper, but that's not being a writer.
If it wasn't so fucking enjoyable, I can't think why anybody would do it
at all...
Oh, and looking at those stats, nearly 12,000 of the participants /failed/
to finish.
What worries me is, how many of them learned 'I did that the wrong way; I
need to try another way', and how many learned 'Jeez, I can't even write a
crap 50K with thousands of people supporting me; I should give this up'.
Because a proportion of those people will have taken away the wrong lesson
entirely.
The NaNoWriMo page doesn't look as though it easily lends itself to being
rewritten as a 'this is just one way, maybe useful, maybe not', though.
Mary
Boudewijn Rempt
> Good grief: for something that's supposed to be good-humoured
> play-writing/writing-exercise, there are a whole slew of people there who
> jump up in the air when a published writer expresses her opinion. And
> who then proceed to be snide about the concept of writing for a living.
> Touchy, much?
>
Well, be fair. Alma's pretty touchy about the unwashed masses claiming
membership of her exclusive club. She's shown this touchiness rather often
before.
--
Boudewijn Rempt | http://www.valdyas.org
Brian M. Scott
<ir...@valdyas.org> wrote:
>On Saturday 25 October 2003 03:59 Elizabeth Shack wrote:
>> I can give talks; it's answering questions and being interrupted I
>> can't deal with.
>Whereas I can answer questions (extensively), but I can't do the
>introduction that makes it possible for people to ask questions. Even
>in the little kids' church-school class I start by prompting them
>whether they already know something about <subject> and if anyone has a
>question, in order to give me a handle.
I don't require it, but I agree that it makes matters *much*
easier. I typically start a class session by asking for
questions on material from the previous session, use the
resulting questions as jumping-off points, add something new, and
leave them with a new batch of problems that go just a little
beyond what I've said -- thereby almost guaranteeing more
questions next time.
Brian
Alma Hromic Deckert
wrote:
nope not at all. i have done editing of first novels, and i've done
(and am still doing) plenty of "mentoring" (if you want to call it
that) with writers who are starting out on this road and who bring
their stuff to be discussed and dissected. when i was living in
florida we had a regular little writers group meeting at our place on
monday nights. one of them was writing seriously publishable
thrillers, and for her it's a matter of time - she's already sold a
couple of short stories and her second novel, even more brilliant than
her first, is at present with a NY publisher who was showing nibbling
noises. another has written a very funny thing which i am absolutely
certain can sell like hot cakes if she published it, but she's done
nothing with it so far and won't until she's ready to try it, and
that's fine too. a third has a ghastly grasp of grammar and spelling
and his manuscripts are painful to read sometimes - but shit, he's so
cutting-edge cult-classic - think Forrest Gump meets Catch 22 meets
James Bond - thati can see his stuff (if published) still selling in
the millions when he's eighty. a fourth one is a young girl with such
a fierce sense of story that she glows with it - but she's so scared,
so shy, so unsure of herself that it's been a battle even convincing
her that she belogns in that little circle.
since we left florida all of these people have been in regular touch
with myself and my husband via email and telephone. they ask us
questions, they share their successes, we try and point out those
bumps in the road that we're aware of and that they may be coming up
on around the next bend.
i have never either thought or believed that any of these were lesser
human beings than myself. they call themselves writers, and that's
fine, because they ARE - they love what they do (and they do lots of
other things in their daily lives - one's a pharmacist, one's in law
school, one's a yoga instructor and one is a full-time step-mom to a
young boy as well as fighting a debilitiating disease of her own every
day). they write because they want to write, because they need to
write. they will write at the kitchen table when they get back from
work, if necessary. they have no articifical deadlines - they write so
that they wil have written the best thing they are capable of writing.
if it takes them a month, that's fine. if it takes them four years
that's also fine. if it takes them twice that and they put the MS
under their mattress in the end and sleep on it for the rest of their
lives, that's fine too.
but they never walk into a room and announce "i am a novelist".
it might come across as snooty, but jesus, i have dreamed of being a
working writer who can make a living off of it all of my life. can't i
take a little pride in the fact that i seem to have achieved this
somehow? and can't i take issue, just a little, that a person who has
cobbled together a rickety table with two legs shorter than the others
("but it's a TABLE!") in woodworking class then seems to be entitled
to walk out of the workshop and announce to the world, "i am a
carpenter"?
<sigh>
sorry. i'll just recuse myself from this thread from here on.
A.
Boudewijn Rempt
> it might come across as snooty, but jesus, i have dreamed of being a
> working writer who can make a living off of it all of my life. can't i
> take a little pride in the fact that i seem to have achieved this
> somehow? and can't i take issue, just a little, that a person who has
> cobbled together a rickety table with two legs shorter than the others
> ("but it's a TABLE!") in woodworking class then seems to be entitled
> to walk out of the workshop and announce to the world, "i am a
> carpenter"?
>
Yes, you can, and I'll call you a snob for it.
Catja Pafort
> > Link, in case you want to read it yourself:
> > http://www.livejournal.com/users/browngirl/496315.html
>
> Reading through that...
>
> Good grief: for something that's supposed to be good-humoured
> play-writing/writing-exercise, there are a whole slew of people there who
> jump up in the air when a published writer expresses her opinion. And
> who then proceed to be snide about the concept of writing for a living.
> Touchy, much?
Naah.
What I found astonishing was that none of them seemed to be reading the
article I read. I did not think Alma was devoid of all humour - I found
it funny, although not in a tongue-in-cheek, or bellylaugh way. Dryer,
more subtle, but humour nonetheless.
> I took the NaNoWriMo page -- which I read last year; must check and see if
> it's different this year -- as being in fun, but it does look like there's
> some people who want to say 'I write, I'm not published, I'm never going
> to /be/ published, but I'm just like a published writer all the same'.
>
> Well, no.
They're the people who want to have written a novel without going
through the 'writing' stage, methinks.
> Alma's "self-delusional at best, a flat out lie at worst" isn't the most
> tactful way of putting this, but it's accurate.
The frightening thing is that a lot of those people probably don't
*realise* what it means to write well. They see the bottom rung of the
ladder, the first level of sophistication (string x amount of words
together with decent characters and plot, beginning, middle, end), and
don't appreciate the ones that follow (PoV, techniques of incuing,
pacing...) and they certainly don't seem to internalize that there is a
'polishing at sentence level, choosing the exact right word for every
instance _and knowing what it does to the novel as a whole_ (which I can
see exists, but can't imagine aquiring)
> There are a lot of things
> you can be at 50K-per-November -- writer for fun, writer for therapy,
> writer as exercise, writer-in-training -- but 'the same as a published
> writer' isn't one of them. Otherwise all the successful NaNoWriMo-ists
> who wanted to would have contracts and publication dates.
Well, there is NaNoEdMo (which I think is designated December) and you
don't have to 'finish a novel' just 'finish the first 50K of a novel'
(Which I'm still grousing about - my problem is endings, not beginnings,
beginnings I can write by the dozen, but why shouldn't I use the idea to
finally *finish* a novel, if that's what I need?)
> However, to be fair, NaNoWriMo didn't invent pretentious twats, and
> pretentious twats will be around long after NaNoWriMo's gone. I can't
> help feeling that someone who writes a bad 50K and calls themselves a
> novelist only contributes in a very minor way to the 'invisibility of
> work' that the profession is stuck with.
You already get them all over the net (with their own webpages), in
writing groups... - I don't think NaNoWriMo creates them.
> It looks to me as if '50K of crap' is the equivalent technique to the
> 'shitty first draft' -- it'll suit some people; it won't suit others; it's
> probably (hmm - possibly) less likely to screw up one's writing than not
> writing at all.
The longer I think about it [1], the more serious screwup potential I
can see.
- it's presented to people who've yet to write a novel as a valid step
in becoming a novellist. Which, for some of them is likely to be true -
and for other's it's going to be wrong. It offers no alternatives.
- the culture prescribes certain ways of writing novels. It lends itself
to some of the nine-and-sixty much better than to others. Both extensive
outliners and seat-of-pants writers seem to do reasonably well;
writers-of-disconnected-scenes will end up with disconnected scenes (but
no novel) and ironically, layering writers might not realise what they
need to do to their shitty first draft to turn it into a decent novel.
- There is no writing advice on the site, or if there is, I haven't
found it. For something aimed at people who've never written a novel,
I'd expect a little 'this is a novel. This is how you could write one'
advice. There is a board where amateurs and people who finished last
year share their advice, but as it's impossible to tell whether what
someone else calls a novel really passes even the most lenient standards
(has plot...) it's unclear how much that advice is worth.
- the format of 'write as many words as you can' encourages bad
practices. People swap tips of upping wordcounts - from 'don't use
contractions' to 'be wordy and infodumpy' (paraphrased) Now we know
where Robert Jordan learnt his craft ;-)
- hands up the people who have started novels. And hands up those who
had to abandon them...
I'm standing here with one novel, one almost-finished 'trilogy' and
about twenty fragments between 2 and 40K. Learning what constitutes a
novel-shaped idea is one of the greatest tasks I've faced, and am still
facing - I know that Ralierite Invasion (murder mystery/foreign legion
fantasy) will be a novel (that's the 40K piece, but I got attacked by
the current project), and I've got two more that I *think* will be
novels. Beyond that, there are some things that might become novels;
several things that definitely will not be novels or anything else
(clichees R us without an interesting enough spin on it, or just not
enough substance for a novel.)
Starting stories with lots of enthusiasm was easy. _Finishing_ them was
not. NaNoWriMo encourages to finish and to keep writing no matter how
bad the result is - and some ideas just need to be abandoned; or put in
a drawer until the writer can do them justice.
> Eh. That /is/ misleading, because I don't think there's anywhere now that
> you can sell 50K-words as a novel. Even if you're doing it for fun, you
> ought to be aware that you're writing a longish novella, and maybe be
> aware that it's not very publishable, if that's important to you.
<snip>
> So, yeah. You're not writing a novel, but the 'frame' gives you no way to
> call it anything else. I think that is a problem.
Definitely. And the structure is different, and it cannot be scaled to
suit. Although the rules allow submitting uninfished works, so it's not
a kilo-cinquenta.
> >Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over talent and craft, NaNoWriMo is a
> >novel-writing program for everyone who has thought fleetingly about
> >writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved.
>
> There's two ways of looking at that one. Getting over the bump of 'stage
> fright', that's fine. Being scared of the time and effort...
>
> If 30 days producing a crap 50K words has convinced you that the time and
> effort required is less than you feared, chances are you're going to be in
> deep, deep shit.
There is that. And where does it stop? Novel-in-a-week (40K)?
Novel-in-a-weekend? (Can't remember how long that was supposed to be,
but I saw that contest somewhere a couple of years back)
I dare say that a lot - if not most - people would be better advised to
spend November learning about writing in a different way.
> There are more people who produce good novels in 12 months+ than there are
> who do it in -6 weeks; it's doing no one any favours to think they'll be
> the latter if they're the former. Which means a small number of people
> will be okay, and a large number will go CRUNCH against a brick wall if
> they ever try writing 100K-words that isn't 'shitty first draft'.
>
> I dunno, maybe I'm over-estimating the effect that expectation will have
> on people?
No idea. Maybe you're going to get Clarion proportions - 1/3 drops out
alltogether, 1/3 keeps scribbling in their own homes, and 1/3 gets
serious about writing?
> >Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in
> >NaNoWriMo is output. It's all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze
> >approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on
> >the fly.
>
> This is going to help a mistaken perfectionist who needs to write a shitty
> first draft. I suspect it's going to badly hurt the writer who genuinely
> needs to have one page right before they move onto the next. Then again,
> I guess those writers may not try it... but you can't be sure of that.
Part of the attraction is the challenge of the thing - you're competing
with yourself, but you're also competing with thousands of others.
People pair up with 'enemies' to egg each other on. And - see padding
techniques - I think a lot of people will write things they wouldn't
write soberly and by the light of day.
> >Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap. And that's a good
> >thing. By forcing yourself to write so intensely, you are giving yourself
> >permission to make mistakes. To forgo the endless tweaking and editing
> >and just create. To build without tearing down.
>
> And that's just 'turn off the internal editor'.
>
> But, again, it assumes that everybody who signs up for NaNoWriMo needs
> their internal editor thwacked with a big stick. Some people need to
> nurture their editor, on account of same editor badly needs to get a look
> in.
>
> I have a feeling the prescriptiveness could do a lot more harm than what's
> actually being prescribed. It doesn't hurt to find out if you should turn
> your internal editor off. It may well hurt to be told you /have/ to do
> it, to achieve your 50K in the month.
My internal editor would come after me with a big stick...
'Permission to make mistakes' can be very helpful. It was for me. But
I've also got a writing speed where I get into the territory of 'too
sloppy' and the resulting prose suffers greatly; and it's a lot harder
to fix once-written scenes than to write them well from the beginning.
<snip>
> In some ways, I think that's the most insidious problem with NaNoWriMo.
> Anybody can write with a cheer-leader squad, even if it's one they're part
> of.
> It's not going to be like NaNoWriMo, when you set out to do something that
> lasts more than a month, and is as long as a novel. It's going to involve
> giving up raucous celebrations, more than it's going to involve taking
> part in them. The biggest part of writing is done on your own, alone;
> inside your own head if (like Jane Austen) you don't have a room of your
> own. And if you don't have some capacity for liking your own company, and
> being content spending long hours alone at the keyboard or notebook,
> writing's going to drive you /nuts./
At the same time, I'm continuously amazed how social an activity writing
is. Once I thought that a book was produced by one person in a garret,
the writer. On closer examination, I find that this is not so - there
are crit groups, online and face-to-face, there is IWriSloMo (a friendly
group of fellow rasfcers whining and exchanging bits and pieces and
offering encouragement), there is rasfc where one can learn techniques,
see what works and what doesn't work, learn how other people work and
pick up new inspirations, and there are face-to-face lunches during
which novels-in-progress are discussed - yes, there's a lot of
'retreating inside your head' but it's not as lonely as I'd thought.
> Oh, and looking at those stats, nearly 12,000 of the participants /failed/
> to finish.
>
> What worries me is, how many of them learned 'I did that the wrong way; I
> need to try another way', and how many learned 'Jeez, I can't even write a
> crap 50K with thousands of people supporting me; I should give this up'.
> Because a proportion of those people will have taken away the wrong lesson
> entirely.
There was a thread on 'why people didn't finish' and a lot of it was 'I
didn't set the wordcount high enough to allow for illness etc'; with
some 'I started the wrong novel' thrown in.
And while the peer network can be useful, I'd think that designated
mentors who know how to 'write novels' as opposed to the one NaNovel
would be a great addition to the project.
Catja
[1] Well, thought and reading some of the bulletin boards.
Dan Goodman
$e4fe...@dreader12.news.xs4all.nl:
No; that makes her an elitist.
By strict definition, a snob is someone who 1) wants to associate only
with The Right People and 2) isn't one of The Right People.
A non-writer, or a writer who's just barely sold the minimum required for
SFWA membership, who wanted to hang out only with Hugo-winning writers,
would be a snob.
--
Dan Goodman
Journal http://dsgood.blogspot.com or
http://www.livejournal.com/users/dsgood/
Whatever you wish for me, may you have twice as much.
Catja Pafort
> it might come across as snooty, but jesus, i have dreamed of being a
> working writer who can make a living off of it all of my life. can't i
> take a little pride in the fact that i seem to have achieved this
> somehow? and can't i take issue, just a little, that a person who has
> cobbled together a rickety table with two legs shorter than the others
> ("but it's a TABLE!") in woodworking class then seems to be entitled
> to walk out of the workshop and announce to the world, "i am a
> carpenter"?
FWIW, I think you do have that right, and I - as unpublished, but
serious writer - do not find myself put down in any way, shape or form.
I feel much the same about classical dressage. I'm a purist, and if some
choose to call me a snob, so be it. There is a place for encouraging
newbies, but there is also a place for keeping the Art behind the craft
alive. The essay might have been somewhat harsh in formulation, but I
agree with its general sentiments.
Catja
Brian M. Scott
>Alma Hromic Deckert wrote:
No, that's unfair. She has every right to be proud of it, and
it's not snobbery to be so. Nor do I think that the distinction
is unimportant. I just get a little annoyed when in an effort to
emphasize her success in achieving this level she tries to
enforce verbal distinctions that for many people just don't
exist. (Mind you, I'd get even more annoyed at idiots who
thought that writing 50,000 words of story made them novelists in
Alma's sense; that's just dumb.)
Brian
Chris Johnson
Graydon <o...@uniserve.com> wrote:
> In <3f9bf304$0$21003$e4fe...@dreader12.news.xs4all.nl>,
> Boudewijn Rempt <bo...@valdyas.org> onsendan:
> Why?
>
> There is a real distinction between 'can make a table' and 'can make a
> living working in a cabinet shop' and another one between 'working in'
> and 'running'. It's, further, a real distinction with a clear increase
> in skill and knowledge required, going from the table to running the
> shop.
I am entirely sympathetic to Alma on this: at the same time, I just
did something that touches on other points being raised.
I've come up with an artist's easel design that I can cut on a table
saw, assemble, and sell for retail of under $50 (maybe even under $40)
without hosing myself for labor. The result is moderately rickety
compared with $120 and $200 easels, and it looks kinda cool but very
much 'I cut this on a table saw', with the best I can hope for being
nice clean squared edges.
I am not a cabinetmaker. These easels are retarded firewood by the
standards of a cabinetmaker.
I am an industrial designer- because these are easels, they work, I
can sell them for a quarter the cost of their fancy cousins and could
make one in a half an hour. (actually, I've been working extremely hard
in that job- I also have a hi-fi speaker design of very similar
qualities)
By the same token, a NaNo grad may not be anywhere nearer the goal of
being a novelist. But they've proven their skill at filling column
inches under pressure: succeeding at that could be better qualification
for being a working reporter than a novelist. Being able to sit down
EVERY day and devote oneself to an activity is a huge deal! It might not
have anything to do with being a publishable fiction writer, but it
speaks volumes about the ability to self-discipline. That's applicible
in countless ways.
Those of us who are pursuing the 'novelist' role have to manage the
self-discipline thing too, and the not-get-blocked thing, lest we end up
like Douglas Adams, dependent on the ability to have a cash cow for lack
of the ability to write a whole bunch of books.
Chris Johnson
Marilee J. Layman
wrote:
> I've come up with an artist's easel design that I can cut on a table
>saw, assemble, and sell for retail of under $50 (maybe even under $40)
>without hosing myself for labor. The result is moderately rickety
>compared with $120 and $200 easels, and it looks kinda cool but very
>much 'I cut this on a table saw', with the best I can hope for being
>nice clean squared edges.
Dick Blick sells well-finished easels as low as $50. You might want
to look and see what the competition is.
> I am not a cabinetmaker. These easels are retarded firewood by the
>standards of a cabinetmaker.
>
> I am an industrial designer- because these are easels, they work, I
>can sell them for a quarter the cost of their fancy cousins and could
>make one in a half an hour. (actually, I've been working extremely hard
>in that job- I also have a hi-fi speaker design of very similar
>qualities)
Then I suggest you make a decent table/lap size vertical loom (that
would have to be finished, since thread is involved). Nobody is
making them of wood right now, and the Mirrix metal ones are not only
metal, which twists under pressure faster than wood, but use heddles
which is more complicated than most beadweavers want, and are
excessively expensive.
Here's a picture of the looms Cindy's husband made before he got sick:
http://members.tripod.com/~cindyscrafts/looms.htm
Hmmm, I would have said I had a picture of my loom, but apparently
not. It doesn't have the base like Cindy's does, and the warping
mechanism isn't as massive. There's a lot of people who want vertical
looms in wood, so if you're interested, email me and I'll take
pictures of my loom so you get another idea of how they work.
Chris Johnson
Marilee J. Layman <mjla...@erols.com> wrote:
> Dick Blick sells well-finished easels as low as $50. You might want
> to look and see what the competition is.
Hmm- thought the Single Mast would be that one, but it was over $60.
It also doesn't have a shelf, mine has a crude shelf. There's another
that is $68. There's an aluminum one that's $62, looks real spindly. I
daresay you have to pay shipping. (I'm not looking so much at the kid
easels, as mine is 6' single mast, solid wood and has a little shelf.
Its canvas holders are admittedly not very sophisticated, but not that
unlike those of some of the aluminum ones.
It's tough to compete with stuff being manufactured in China and such
places- but I think I'm still in the running, pricewise. I have the
ability to cut the price more deeply than Dick Blick can.
Ah, found the $50 easel. It is a delicate aluminum tripod easel from
Stanrite. Nice, but my materials costs are still a fifth of that and
mine looks more solid and more funky. Shipping on the Stanrite would
certainly be a lot easier though :)
I bet I can sell some of mine in the local art store :) they are
funky and rustic in exactly the way a slender aluminum tripod is not...
> > I am an industrial designer- because these are easels, they work, I
> >can sell them for a quarter the cost of their fancy cousins and could
> >make one in a half an hour. (actually, I've been working extremely hard
> >in that job- I also have a hi-fi speaker design of very similar
> >qualities)
>
> Then I suggest you make a decent table/lap size vertical loom (that
> would have to be finished, since thread is involved). Nobody is
> making them of wood right now, and the Mirrix metal ones are not only
> metal, which twists under pressure faster than wood, but use heddles
> which is more complicated than most beadweavers want, and are
> excessively expensive.
>
> Here's a picture of the looms Cindy's husband made before he got sick:
>
> http://members.tripod.com/~cindyscrafts/looms.htm
>
> Hmmm, I would have said I had a picture of my loom, but apparently
> not. It doesn't have the base like Cindy's does, and the warping
> mechanism isn't as massive. There's a lot of people who want vertical
> looms in wood, so if you're interested, email me and I'll take
> pictures of my loom so you get another idea of how they work.
Actually, I wove two scarves in high school that I still use to this
day. I think I understand how a loom works, I just am not sure quite
what I'm seeing here. Is this just for stretching a web of threads, or
does it shift the odd and even ones around like the big foot-pedal
operated one I used in high school?
You're right, I could see the potential of coming up with some sort
of uber-low-budget loom. Dick Blick has just a _frame_ that doesn't even
move the threads for you, at over $200. The Leclerc Dorothy Table Loom
is a lot more like what I used, but it's $370.
Beadweaving must be a very different process?
Chris Johnson
Boudewijn Rempt
>>Yes, you can, and I'll call you a snob for it.
>
> No, that's unfair. She has every right to be proud of it, and
> it's not snobbery to be so.
I don't care about pride; As far as I'm concerned anyone can be as proud as
she wants. I care about telling other people what they can and cannot label
themselves.
David Friedman
Boudewijn Rempt <bo...@valdyas.org> wrote:
> Brian M. Scott wrote:
>
> >>Yes, you can, and I'll call you a snob for it.
> >
> > No, that's unfair. She has every right to be proud of it, and
> > it's not snobbery to be so.
>
> I don't care about pride; As far as I'm concerned anyone can be as proud as
> she wants. I care about telling other people what they can and cannot label
> themselves.
Along with caring so fiercely about how other people label themselves.
--
Remove NOSPAM to email
Also remove .invalid
www.daviddfriedman.com
Khiem Tran
> The frightening thing is that a lot of those people probably don't
> *realise* what it means to write well. They see the bottom rung of the
> ladder, the first level of sophistication (string x amount of words
> together with decent characters and plot, beginning, middle, end), and
> don't appreciate the ones that follow (PoV, techniques of incuing,
> pacing...) and they certainly don't seem to internalize that there is a
> 'polishing at sentence level, choosing the exact right word for every
> instance _and knowing what it does to the novel as a whole_ (which I can
> see exists, but can't imagine aquiring)
Hmm. I wonder if this is another example of what I call "The Hand and
The Eye" (I'm sure there's a better name for it somewhere).
The "Hand" is the ability to do a thing. The "Eye" is the ability to
see that it is good (and to visualize what needed to be done in the
first place). The hand is the "Craft" if you like, the eye is the
"Art".
My hypothesis is that for any skilled activity, unless you're either a
genius or an idiot savant, what you really need is a circuit between
the two. The key to success is then finding the best balance - how
much emphasis to put on the hand, how much on the eye - which will
vary from person to person and activity to activity.
I haven't thought about this in the context of writing, but it does
seem to fit. Put too much emphasis on the hand and you end up with the
infinite monkeys syndrome - sure they'll get you Shakespeare, but how
will you know it when they're done? Put too much emphasis on the eye
and... well, you never get started. You just sit over-analysing and
recooking your opening sentences until they just look like a jumble of
letters.
(This hypothesis originally came from watching various amateur and
semi-pro photographers. There were some who just never got it. They
memorized all the tricks and techniques, but they never had the eye
for a good photo. Then, I applied to software development techniques,
with some interesting results.)
The thing about NaNoWriMo is that concentrates purely on the hand.
This may be just the thing for someone who needs to improve on that
area, but in terms of churning out completed novelists ... well, it
can't because it only exercises one half of the equation. (At least,
if my hypothesis holds true...)
Nine-and-sixty-ways, and all that...
Khiem.
Charlie Stross
as <green...@cix.co.uk.invalid> declared:
> Starting stories with lots of enthusiasm was easy. _Finishing_ them was
> not.
Key insight ...
I have just finished the sixth re-draft of a novel (the
"eating yesterday's stale cold vomit remix" as I've been
telling anyone who asked down at the pub). The novel is due to
be published early in 2005, so I think we can categorize it as
a qualified success -- it made the finishing line. But *SIX*
drafts?
Okay, let's take it from the top:
September 2001. Charlie and his agent have a long exchange of
email in which his agent attempts to incite him to
extrude fantasy product. Charlie declines, but offers to
extrude politically-charged alternate history/time travel
instead. An outline is discussed. (Meanwhile Charlie's attempt
to set up a new dot-com, in conjunction with a friend who's
the ex-CEO of an ISP, bombs because the first VC discussion
is held on ... September 12th. Two days earlier and this novel
would have been still-born. Go figure.)
October 16th, 2001. Charlie sits down and works until November
10th. Takes three days off, then sits down and works again
until November 29th. Okay, so it overran NaNoWrMo's duration
by 14 days -- but the first draft comes in at 155,000 words.
During early November Charlie lies on his back panting, then
realises that verily, the ending Sucks, Big-Time. So on
December 16th, he picks up the novel again, line-edits his way
through the entire thing until he gets to the last chapter,
hacks it off, and writes an extra 40,000 words. This he
completes on January 14th, so we can tack an extra month onto
the 6 week process of initial writing, all because he tried
to go too fast in the first place.
Charlie then takes a couple of months off because (a) he's in
copy-edit/proof-reading hell (with three novels descending on
him at once) and (b) his agent is reading through the
manuscript. This being the 21st century, and his agent being a
former editor (and a conscientious one), she has quite a few
interesting suggestions. He gets round to tackling them in
mid-March, and takes three weeks over the job. The novel then
goes off to $BIG_PUBLISHER.
$BIG_PUBLISHER likes it and offers a contract, and the editor
in question says "can you re-draft it, bearing in mind <x>,
<y>, and <z> by the beginning of June?" So on May 5th, after
a month off, Charlie goes back to work on the increasingly-
boring project, and works on it for another three weeks. The
novel makes the end-of-May deadline, the contract is nailed
down, $BIG_PUBLISHER is happy. Is it all over? Not quite.
$BIG_PUBLISHER has some minor issues; these surface in late
February, 2003 (we're now 18 months from the first draft) and
Charlie spends a week polishing. Then $BIG_PUBLISHER drops a
bomb-shell; one of the deities who run the place has taken a
look at the 195,000 word doorstep and decreed "let's publish
this in two volumes!" Segmentation throws the plot pacing out
a bit, necessitating a re-write -- the midpoint climax needs to
be beefed up for the end of volume #1, while volume #2 needs a
beginning and the essential guts to stand on its own.
The resectioning starts on August 5th, 2003, and takes
approximately 2 weeks for the first half of the book -- the
first half is in good shape. But when Charlie gets to the
second half around September 1st, he finds it needs a lot
more work. Four weeks. The total length is now 199,000 words.
Now we've reached the present. What happens next?
It looks likely that $BIG_PUBLISHER will request some minor
tweaks, but these can be taken care of at the copy-editing
stage. The next major step is to send the book(s) for copy
editing. This will then necessitate Charlie spending at least
two more weeks ploughing through edits writing "stet" in the
margin or otherwise adding his graffiti to the pages. Some
time later the proofs will be typeset, and Charlie will again
spend two weeks poring over them -- but he cheats, and pays
a professional proofreader he knows to help out (because he
knows from experience that he is truly b-a-d at proofreading).
The original six week project has consumed 27-28 weeks of
work. This isn't normal nine-til-five office paced work with
chats by the water cooler; it's up to twelve hours a day of
total focus and concentration, broken by periods of lying on
the sofa, completely ennervated and in need of a vacation
(which we're not counting). The elapsed wall-clock time is
close to two years, but that's okay -- he's still in business
because he wrote another two novels while all this was going
on.
But the point is, your four weeks of first-draft madness
actually corresponds to the first four weeks of *FIVE MONTHS*
of real-world work in getting the material published. And
confusing one with the other is like confusing the first mile
with the marathon.
-- Charlie
Zeborah
> Okay, let's have a look at this year's page:
>
> >National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to
> >novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to
> >write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30.
>
> Eh. That /is/ misleading, because I don't think there's anywhere now that
> you can sell 50K-words as a novel. Even if you're doing it for fun, you
> ought to be aware that you're writing a longish novella, and maybe be
> aware that it's not very publishable, if that's important to you.
To be fair, at least one YA market wants about 40K words. (But sf and
fantasy 'doesn't work for them', phooey.) I hope most YA markets are
happy with about 44K words or whatever the Kangaroo story ends up as
after multiple edits; it's certainly not going to reach 100K.
But most NaNoWriMo participants aren't writing YA, I'd wager.
Zeborah
Mary Gentle
bo...@valdyas.org (Boudewijn Rempt) wrote:
What's not to be 'touchy' about? It /is/ an exclusive club.
Not everybody wants or tries to join it, which is fine; that's not all
that writing can be for. But the people who do want to join don't join by
writing unpublishable crap and stopping there. They write unpublishable
stuff until they get it to be publishable -- or not.
The profession of writing is stuck with a kind of invisibility of work
that doesn't attend on music, or oil-painting, or carpentry, or the rest.
Consequently, if you do it as a living, you run across rather a lot of
pretentious twats who'll tell you 'oh, I could do that'.
Short of hitting them over the head with two blank reams of A4 paper and
saying "Go on, then!", the alternative is to get touchy.
I have so far restrained myself from belting idiots with a heavy object,
on the grounds that they _are_ idiots. Verbal expression on the subject
of their idiocy has got to be preferable, right?
Right?
Mary
Mary Gentle
bo...@valdyas.org (Boudewijn Rempt) wrote:
> Brian M. Scott wrote:
>
> >>Yes, you can, and I'll call you a snob for it.
> >
> > No, that's unfair. She has every right to be proud of it, and
> > it's not snobbery to be so.
>
> I don't care about pride; As far as I'm concerned anyone can be as
> proud as
> she wants. I care about telling other people what they can and cannot
> label
> themselves.
They can label themselves what they want. Perhaps she should have
emphasised what idiots they'll look when they've done it?
Laying claim to a skill you don't have is idiotic.
Mary
Mary Gentle
bo...@valdyas.org (Boudewijn Rempt) wrote:
Boudewijn, that's idiotic.
I can introduce you to any number of carpenters and joiners who,
confronted with a rickety table and the person who announces themselves a
carpenter, will laugh like drains.
Ditto writers.
Doesn't mean that a carpenter won't pass on hints about how to make a
table, or that the joiner won't show you how to do dove-tail joints, or
that you're not an apprentice carpenter. But you can't call yourself a
carpenter until you can _do_ it.
The person in woodwork class who wants to put up some shelves or make
cupboards for their own pleasure isn't aiming at being a professional
carpenter. Why should they, if they don't want to?
Non-metaphorically: I like the bookshelves I've put up, they function
fine, but I'm not going to tell my friend the qualified joiner that I'm a
carpenter. If I were planning on doing that, I'd be off getting an
apprenticeship.
That isn't snobbery, it's realism.
Mary
Helen
>
> No, that's unfair. She has every right to be proud of it, and
> it's not snobbery to be so. Nor do I think that the distinction
> is unimportant. I just get a little annoyed when in an effort to
> emphasize her success in achieving this level she tries to
> enforce verbal distinctions that for many people just don't
> exist. (Mind you, I'd get even more annoyed at idiots who
> thought that writing 50,000 words of story made them novelists in
> Alma's sense; that's just dumb.)
>
> Brian
I don't think there's all that much to worry about, to be honest. The
"novelists" who have only written a NaNoWriMo 50K "novel" will soon
come a cropper if they try to brag about it in social gatherings. In
my experience, the questions that soon follow from the announcement
that one is a writer are, "What have you written?" and "Have you had
anything published?" This will soon reveal the true extent of the
writerly output.
As Mary said upthread, the main danger I see from NaNoWriMo is that
far from being a wonderful liberating experience, it's just going to
produce lots of people feeling like failures. I nearly got sucked in
last year by the enthusiasm of the web site, but thankfully saw sense
and have been a happy member of IWriSloMo[*] ever since. I currently
have 15,000 words of the new WIP written, and hope to finish the first
draft by next Easter or thereabouts. I can't write at NaNoWriMo pace
with my working methods and day job commitments, though there's a
writer whose LiveJournal I read, for whom 1500 words or more a day is
her natural pace and who can keep it up for much longer than a month.
But she's working from a detailed outline and extensive notes, which
doesn't work for me. However, NaNoWriMo might convince writers like
me that they shouldn't ever be writers because they can't even write
50,000 words of crap.
Helen
[*]International Write Something Month, later extended to mean I Write
In Slow Motion :-)
--
http://www.baradel.demon.co.uk/
Mary Gentle
zeb...@netaccess.co.nz (Zeborah) wrote:
That would be my bet, too.
Further on, in the General FAQ, there are words to the effect that they
know it's a novella, not a novel, but they can't call it a novella because
-- hang on, I'll find the quote.
>Why 50,000 words? Isn't that more of a novella?
>Our experiences over the past three years show that 50,000 is a difficult
>but doable goal, even for people with full-time jobs. The length makes it
>a short novel. We don't use the word "novella" because it doesn't seem to
>impress people the way "novel" does.
While I have every sympathy with aiming at 'doable goals', with the
exception of YA, as you point out, 50K isn't 'a short novel'. That hasn't
been true for a good ten or fifteen years. You can just about manage a
slim mainstream volume at that length, in the UK, but they tend not to
publish one from writers without a previous track record. So 50K /can/
sell, but it's way out there on the 'difficult' scale.
But then again, they're not about just squeaking within the bounds of a
definition. They want 'novel' because 'novel' _impresses people._
Which is an attitude that gets right up my nose. /That/ is the rickety
table maker calling themselves a carpenter.
Mary
Charlie Stross
> The profession of writing is stuck with a kind of invisibility of work
> that doesn't attend on music, or oil-painting, or carpentry, or the rest.
> Consequently, if you do it as a living, you run across rather a lot of
> pretentious twats who'll tell you 'oh, I could do that'.
My favourite example was a statistic Teresa Nielsen Hayden
found quoted by another columnist on the subject of writing
(so it qualifies as apocryphal at best -- I'm still looking
for substantiation): a survey in 2001 found that roughly 75%
of the American population "thought they had a novel in them",
but the functional literacy rate (people able to *read* a
goddamn novel) was only around 65%.
> Short of hitting them over the head with two blank reams of A4 paper and
> saying "Go on, then!", the alternative is to get touchy.
Or smile sweetly and quote the Society of Authors figures for
what the average novelist earns in a year. And suggest that
they might prefer a more lucrative career as, say, an
Architect or a Surgeon. After all, "I could do that" ...
-- Charlie
m.baro
Helen wrote:
[...]
>
> As Mary said upthread, the main danger I see from NaNoWriMo is that
> far from being a wonderful liberating experience, it's just going to
> produce lots of people feeling like failures. I nearly got sucked in
> last year by the enthusiasm of the web site, but thankfully saw sense
> and have been a happy member of IWriSloMo[*] ever since. I currently
> have 15,000 words of the new WIP written, and hope to finish the first
> draft by next Easter or thereabouts. I can't write at NaNoWriMo pace
> with my working methods and day job commitments, though there's a
> writer whose LiveJournal I read, for whom 1500 words or more a day is
> her natural pace and who can keep it up for much longer than a month.
> But she's working from a detailed outline and extensive notes, which
> doesn't work for me. However, NaNoWriMo might convince writers like
> me that they shouldn't ever be writers because they can't even write
> 50,000 words of crap.
>
I'm a member of the NaNoWriMo community on LJ, and really, I've just
been shaking my head at the people who've been doing detailed plot
outlines, character sketches etc. It's seems rather tedious for
something that's supposed to be a month long writing exercise and
nothing more, really.
I'm just doing it because I've been a butt-lugg when it comes to writing
anything longer than a long short story. I might get something out of
it, I might not, but hell no I'm not going to call myself a novelist.
It's bad enough that I'm called an "artist".
-Min
Alma Hromic Deckert
that attitude is precisely the reason i wrote that article in the
first place. people write for a lot of different reasons and they are
all valid - but writing to impress people is simply not one of them.
bragging about writing to impress people is even less comprehensible
to me.
sorry, boudewijn, but if that makes me a snob, then i'm a snob.
<small sigh>
A.
Charlie Stross
> sorry, boudewijn, but if that makes me a snob, then i'm a snob.
Me too.
Now can we get back to the matter in hand, namely writing?
-- Charlie
Brian Pickrell
> > I'll call you a snob for it.
> >
> No; that makes her an elitist.
>
> By strict definition, a snob is someone who 1) wants to associate only
> with The Right People and 2) isn't one of The Right People.
>
> A non-writer, or a writer who's just barely sold the minimum required for
> SFWA membership, who wanted to hang out only with Hugo-winning writers,
> would be a snob.
I didn't know that.
It's a very good word, now that I know the precise meaning. I like it.
Chris Johnson
mary_...@cix.co.uk (Mary Gentle) wrote:
> The profession of writing is stuck with a kind of invisibility of work
> that doesn't attend on music, or oil-painting, or carpentry, or the rest.
> Consequently, if you do it as a living, you run across rather a lot of
> pretentious twats who'll tell you 'oh, I could do that'.
"...if I had the kind of free time that you have."
*EG*
Me, I might as well have sold my soul to the devil like that earlier
Johnson for my facilty with written English- there's a heavy price
exacted on other parts of my personality, so that I'm STILL, at 35,
struggling to master bits of life that other people find automatic. I'm
bloody lucky to have stumbled across a romantic mate as whacky as I am-
if not for that, and the odds were against it, I would still be shut up
in a garret with my cat, trying to figure out why I couldn't work up the
joie de vivre of the REAL people.
But never mind. That is self-pity, and I don't have to live there
anymore.
I'm just saying that very little of it has to do with having the time
or discipline to put words on paper. However, the odds are better that
the sort of person who'd respond to the call of NaNo is the person who
does have something to say. That, or a chip on the shoulder, or an
insatiable hunger for titles and impressive labels >:)
I started this thread, and it answered my question: what I do isn't
NaNo. I do write every day that I'm at home (considering expanding this
outwards so I write at least a bit even when I'm not home, thus making
it every day period), and I've already written NaNo sized things
repeatedly, and am currently digging my little claws into the
Publishable Zone, and laying plans to seize a chunk of it in much the
same way our cat Nell seizes a dish of wet cat food (words fail me...)
Line me up with the snobs- or, rather, since I don't feel any need to
think badly of nonwriters expanding their horizons in my direction, with
the elitists. I have a habit of hitting paydirt on the _first_ query and
getting discouraged if I don't get immediate success. To deal with this
I will have to learn patience and the ability to keep clawing away
tenaciously even if I do NOT have success, even if I am NOT 'a novelist'
in the elite sense with my, um, fourth try (first three went on the web,
the two before that were not finished)
Cheers to NaNo- call yourselves whatever the hell you want- rejoice
that no matter WHERE you're at, there's always more. I wonder how Mary
or Charlie or Alma would react to a DiscworldCon. Would they react like
I would, namely "I want one of these for ME!"? ;)
Chris Johnson
Charlie Stross
> In article <memo.2003102...@roxanne.morgan.ntlworld.com>,
>
> Me, I might as well have sold my soul to the devil like that earlier
> Johnson for my facilty with written English- there's a heavy price
> exacted on other parts of my personality, so that I'm STILL, at 35,
> struggling to master bits of life that other people find automatic. I'm
> bloody lucky to have stumbled across a romantic mate as whacky as I am-
> if not for that, and the odds were against it, I would still be shut up
> in a garret with my cat, trying to figure out why I couldn't work up the
> joie de vivre of the REAL people.
Ahem. This singles you out as different from the rest of us
how, exactly?
> Cheers to NaNo- call yourselves whatever the hell you want- rejoice
> that no matter WHERE you're at, there's always more. I wonder how Mary
> or Charlie or Alma would react to a DiscworldCon. Would they react like
> I would, namely "I want one of these for ME!"? ;)
Well I don't know about that, but here's a hostage to fortune:
I intend to throw a big party at some uncertain time in the
future. The proximate cause of the party will be the first
time I see a serious reviewer (with no knowledge of this
promise :) publish a serious write-up[*] of some hapless
victim as being "the new Charlie Stross". Setting aside the
puzzler that once they've got the new one, why would they want
to keep the old one around, I'll take that as being evidence
that I've Arrived.
Besides, I need a damn good reason for throwing a party these
days -- birthdays need not apply, I think I've got too many of
the things.
-- Charlie
[*] By this I mean at the least a newspaper book-review
column or feature-writer or something similar, somewhere with
real circulation where the reviewer in question is getting
paid in money and has a reputation to lose. And no knowledge
of this promise.
Brian Pickrell
> In article <3udjpvsjs5pfk3o9u...@4ax.com>, qua...@yahoo.com
> (Quadpus) wrote:
>
> > Alma Hromic Deckert <ang...@vaxer.net> wrote:
> > >
> > > see, that's part of what *i* don't like about the whole thing. it's
> > > for "people who are just wanting to write a book but can't be arsed
> > > otherwise". so they can be "arsed", to put it that way, to spend a
> > > month intensively writing 50+K of what is freely admitted to probably
> > > be rubbish - and this entitles them to wrap the laurel of being a
> > > "novelist" around their august heads...?
> >
> > This morning, I came upon some bloggery on the subject of NNWM, with a
> > link to a message board where some people were taking very very great
> > personal offense at an article you wrote about NNWM last year.
> >
> > The way these people were acting, you'd think your article had grown
> > limbs, walked over to their houses, strangled their pets, salted their
> > flowerbeds, and puked on their doorsteps.
>
> Wow. <envy>
>
> >It was ugly and stupid
> > enough to motivate me to look and see if you happened to be talking
> > about it here on rasc, just so I could say, right on, Alma.
> >
> > Right on, Alma.
What these people are missing is that the whole point of calling
oneself a "novelist" at cocktail parties is to piss off stuck-up
people like Alma, not to get pissed off yourself when they lash out.
Otherwise, it's not worth the bother of cheapening and demeaning the
writer's profession. If you set out to wind somebody up and then let
them wind you up instead, you've defeated your purpose.
p.s. the best response was the one about sticking a flashlight up her
ass. It had the virtue of succinctness.
Eric Jarvis
> Stoned koala bears drooled eucalyptus spittle in awe
> as <jinx...@sover.net> declared:
>
> > that no matter WHERE you're at, there's always more. I wonder how Mary
> > or Charlie or Alma would react to a DiscworldCon. Would they react like
> > I would, namely "I want one of these for ME!"? ;)
>
> Well I don't know about that, but here's a hostage to fortune:
>
> I intend to throw a big party at some uncertain time in the
> future. The proximate cause of the party will be the first
> time I see a serious reviewer (with no knowledge of this
> promise :) publish a serious write-up[*] of some hapless
> victim as being "the new Charlie Stross". Setting aside the
> puzzler that once they've got the new one, why would they want
> to keep the old one around, I'll take that as being evidence
> that I've Arrived.
>
Noted and saved. Give us some warning and you can book the DW Con jamming
band. We might know a few songs all the way through by then.
I've already had the "mentioned in a magazine I wouldn't dream of
reading", in this case Esquire. So I'm left with hoping one day that
something I've done will be featured on one of the "I Love <insert year
here>" shows. Though I doubt that will happen until after I've seen one of
those shows that actually has something on it that I remember.
--
eric
www.ericjarvis.co.uk
"live fast, die only if strictly necessary"
Marilee J. Layman
wrote:
> Actually, I wove two scarves in high school that I still use to this
>day. I think I understand how a loom works, I just am not sure quite
>what I'm seeing here. Is this just for stretching a web of threads, or
>does it shift the odd and even ones around like the big foot-pedal
>operated one I used in high school?
>
> You're right, I could see the potential of coming up with some sort
>of uber-low-budget loom. Dick Blick has just a _frame_ that doesn't even
>move the threads for you, at over $200. The Leclerc Dorothy Table Loom
>is a lot more like what I used, but it's $370.
>
> Beadweaving must be a very different process?
Well, it can involve shifting the odd & even warps (that's using a
heddle), but it's not necessary for beadweaving. Most bead looms lie
flat (sort of like a shoebox with cuts across the top for the threads,
but made out of wood bars) and a lot of us who do beadweaving are
disabled and can't sit up at a table to use it. So the vertical looms
have the back bar raised up, making the warp threads go up at about a
45 degree angle. I work in my recliner with the loom on a pillow (to
bring it to the right height) and it doesn't hurt at all. The loom
needs reeds (which can be springs) to warp the threads into, the
take-up bars need to be able to be rolled and tightened (when you make
something long), and it needs to be stable. Almost all of the bead
looms I know about come disassembled and you follow directions to put
them together.
Ah, I knew I had a picture of the loom on the microwave (that's a
white towel underneath so the pattern could be seen):
http://misc.basicbali.com/mina1.jpg
This is a minaudiere that was mostly closed by pulling the warp
threads together. You can see the finished piece here:
http://misc.basicbali.com/minlav.jpg
This is when it's flat for storage (it has a rocketship space-filling
pattern). When it has stuff in it, it opens up a lot:
http://misc.basicbali.com/minaudfl.jpg
See how the rocketship pull is hanging down in this one? I actually
used the minaudiere to show how to scan 3-D things, which is why I
have pictures of it like this.
Dan Goodman
news:slrnbpqs6f....@raq981.uk2net.com.antipope.org:
> I intend to throw a big party at some uncertain time in the
> future. The proximate cause of the party will be the first
> time I see a serious reviewer (with no knowledge of this
> promise :) publish a serious write-up[*] of some hapless
> victim as being "the new Charlie Stross". Setting aside the
> puzzler that once they've got the new one, why would they want
> to keep the old one around, I'll take that as being evidence
> that I've Arrived.
>
I suggest planning another party for when a cover blurb says "In the
tradition of ___ and Charlie Stross."
--
Dan Goodman
Journal http://dsgood.blogspot.com or
http://www.livejournal.com/users/dsgood/
Whatever you wish for me, may you have twice as much.
Boudewijn Rempt
> [*] By this I mean at the least a newspaper book-review
> column or feature-writer or something similar, somewhere with
> real circulation where the reviewer in question is getting
> paid in money and has a reputation to lose. And no knowledge
> of this promise.
Then I hope you've set the x-no-archive header. Oh, zut -- now I've gone and
quoted you on it. Posterity _will_ know.
Chris Johnson
Charlie Stross <cha...@antipope.org> wrote:
> Stoned koala bears drooled eucalyptus spittle in awe
> as <jinx...@sover.net> declared:
>
> > In article <memo.2003102...@roxanne.morgan.ntlworld.com>,
> >
> > Me, I might as well have sold my soul to the devil like that earlier
> > Johnson for my facilty with written English- there's a heavy price
> > exacted on other parts of my personality, so that I'm STILL, at 35,
> > struggling to master bits of life that other people find automatic. I'm
> > bloody lucky to have stumbled across a romantic mate as whacky as I am-
> > if not for that, and the odds were against it, I would still be shut up
> > in a garret with my cat, trying to figure out why I couldn't work up the
> > joie de vivre of the REAL people.
>
> Ahem. This singles you out as different from the rest of us
> how, exactly?
I don't know how different from YOU that might be. You do sell a lot
more than me, mind you- at least for now. So you are a 'novelist' and I
am not, I just work pretty hard :)
> > Cheers to NaNo- call yourselves whatever the hell you want- rejoice
> > that no matter WHERE you're at, there's always more. I wonder how Mary
> > or Charlie or Alma would react to a DiscworldCon. Would they react like
> > I would, namely "I want one of these for ME!"? ;)
>
> Well I don't know about that, but here's a hostage to fortune:
>
> I intend to throw a big party at some uncertain time in the
> future. The proximate cause of the party will be the first
> time I see a serious reviewer (with no knowledge of this
> promise :) publish a serious write-up[*] of some hapless
> victim as being "the new Charlie Stross". Setting aside the
> puzzler that once they've got the new one, why would they want
> to keep the old one around, I'll take that as being evidence
> that I've Arrived.
*g* what do they call you the new? We can throw you a rasfc party,
assuming that hasn't happened yet, which it probably has. :)
Chris Johnson
Alma Hromic Deckert
wrote:
>
>What these people are missing is that the whole point of calling
>oneself a "novelist" at cocktail parties is to piss off stuck-up
>people like Alma, not to get pissed off yourself when they lash out.
>Otherwise, it's not worth the bother of cheapening and demeaning the
>writer's profession. If you set out to wind somebody up and then let
>them wind you up instead, you've defeated your purpose.
>
>p.s. the best response was the one about sticking a flashlight up her
>ass. It had the virtue of succinctness.
so when someone who works pretty damn hard at a profession takes
exception to seeing that profession held up for what that person
perceives as ridicule and snaps at the person doing the ridiculing,
the appropriately succinct response in your book is to suggest
sticking a flashlight up her ass?
charming.
by the way, that sort of response usually simply means that they can't
come up with any counter argument to what's being said, so they resort
to scatological attacks on the person who says it. can't win the
argument, let's lynch the one who's putting it forward instead, one
way or another we'll shout down what we don't like to hear. did you
see any single one of the people who blogged responses to my article
actually respond to any of my points other than with "she's just a
stuck up snob"? I was NOT attacking unpublished writers, or
withholding from anybody at all the privilege of writing - it's the
attitude of NaNoWriMo that got, and still gets, up my nose. that
apparently hasn't changed. and the attitude of the people who
responded to my artcle in the blogs seems to be as shallow as "she's
not a household name, it isn't John Grisham or Stephen King saying
this, so in other words she's just a jumped up Me with a name i don't
instantly recognise from off the million-seller shelves and her
opinions therefore don't matter". no, i am not Stephen King. i AM a
working, professional, published writer with a little bit of industry
experience under my belt. my opinions may not belong to the elevated
strata of supermarket besteller writers, but they have a certain
validity to them, nonetheless, given the circumstances.
My god, it was an opinion. methinks all the Wrimoes (a name off the
website, i'm not coining a snobby putdown, for people who seem to
think i do that for pleasure) doth protest too much, just a tad -
obviously something in that article burned enough to make them lash
out at the messenger, and sometimes quite viciously. opinions are to
be agreed with or dismissed, as you choose, but getting all snotty
because someone doesn't share your own is just as much snobbery as
that which Boudewijn has accused me of suffering from.
i'm surprised, frankly,t hat the thing is still around a year after i
wrote it. i really did touch a nerve somewhere.
A.
Joann Zimmerman
cha...@antipope.org says...
> Besides, I need a damn good reason for throwing a party these
> days -- birthdays need not apply, I think I've got too many of
> the things.
They still only come once a year. Too bad. I like the fancy dinners.
--
"I never understood people who don't have bookshelves."
--George Plimpton
Joann Zimmerman jz...@bellereti.com
Elisabeth Riba
> withholding from anybody at all the privilege of writing - it's the
> attitude of NaNoWriMo that got, and still gets, up my nose. that
> apparently hasn't changed. and the attitude of the people who
> responded to my artcle in the blogs seems to be as shallow as "she's
> not a household name, it isn't John Grisham or Stephen King saying
> this, so in other words she's just a jumped up Me with a name i don't
> instantly recognise from off the million-seller shelves and her
> opinions therefore don't matter".
It seems that your reading comprehension is suffering a little as well.
The original question in that LJ post was whether other professional
writers agreed with your assessment. Thus, the opinions of other
professional writers is entirely relevant and doesn't have to revolve
around an insult against you.
--
------> Elisabeth Riba * http://www.osmond-riba.org/lis/ <------
"[She] is one of the secret masters of the world: a librarian.
They control information. Don't ever piss one off."
- Spider Robinson, "Callahan Touch"
Anna
"Alma Hromic Deckert" <ang...@vaxer.net> wrote in message
news:0fgqpvodo9userth8...@4ax.com...
I wish you would be a snob in the direction of capitalization in your usenet
posts.
Sigh.
A.
David Friedman
> The profession of writing is stuck with a kind of invisibility of work
> that doesn't attend on music, or oil-painting, or carpentry, or the rest.
> Consequently, if you do it as a living, you run across rather a lot of
> pretentious twats who'll tell you 'oh, I could do that'.
You sound as though you think this is something special about writing.
Judging by my experience, the number of people who think their views on
economics deserve to be taken seriously is considerably larger than the
number who think they could write a novel if they tried.
It isn't true of all professions, but it is of a fair number; I'm not
sure exactly what it is that determines whether or not it happens.
--
Remove NOSPAM to email
Also remove .invalid
www.daviddfriedman.com
David Friedman
Charlie Stross <cha...@antipope.org> wrote:
> I intend to throw a big party at some uncertain time in the
> future. The proximate cause of the party will be the first
> time I see a serious reviewer (with no knowledge of this
> promise :) publish a serious write-up[*] of some hapless
> victim as being "the new Charlie Stross". Setting aside the
> puzzler that once they've got the new one, why would they want
> to keep the old one around, I'll take that as being evidence
> that I've Arrived.
Even if the reviewer is panning the book?
Marilee J. Layman
<ang...@vaxer.net> wrote:
>On 27 Oct 2003 12:16:46 -0800, bobth...@brandx.net (Brian Pickrell)
>wrote:
>>
>>What these people are missing is that the whole point of calling
>>oneself a "novelist" at cocktail parties is to piss off stuck-up
>>people like Alma, not to get pissed off yourself when they lash out.
>>Otherwise, it's not worth the bother of cheapening and demeaning the
>>writer's profession. If you set out to wind somebody up and then let
>>them wind you up instead, you've defeated your purpose.
>>
>>p.s. the best response was the one about sticking a flashlight up her
>>ass. It had the virtue of succinctness.
>
>so when someone who works pretty damn hard at a profession takes
>exception to seeing that profession held up for what that person
>perceives as ridicule and snaps at the person doing the ridiculing,
>the appropriately succinct response in your book is to suggest
>sticking a flashlight up her ass?
Alma, Alma, that's Brian *Pickrell*. He's just winding you up to see
what you'll do.
Pat Bowne
"Mary Gentle" <mary_...@cix.co.uk> wrote in message
news:memo.2003102...@roxanne.morgan.ntlworld.com...
Who was it who wrote
'self esteem = accomplishments/pretensions'?
I'm thinking William James, except he might predate the expression 'self
esteem.'
Pat
Mary Gentle
(Alma Hromic Deckert) wrote:
> On 27 Oct 2003 12:16:46 -0800, bobth...@brandx.net (Brian Pickrell)
> wrote:
> >
> >What these people are missing is that the whole point of calling
> >oneself a "novelist" at cocktail parties is to piss off stuck-up
> >people like Alma, not to get pissed off yourself when they lash out.
> >Otherwise, it's not worth the bother of cheapening and demeaning the
> >writer's profession. If you set out to wind somebody up and then let
> >them wind you up instead, you've defeated your purpose.
> >
> >p.s. the best response was the one about sticking a flashlight up her
> >ass. It had the virtue of succinctness.
>
> so when someone who works pretty damn hard at a profession takes
> exception to seeing that profession held up for what that person
> perceives as ridicule and snaps at the person doing the ridiculing,
> the appropriately succinct response in your book is to suggest
> sticking a flashlight up her ass?
>
> charming.
[...]
No, that's just that poster in his 'I'm a wind-up merchant' persona; he
always talks crap under those circumstances.
Mary
Mary Gentle
dd...@daviddfriedmanNOSPAM.com.invalid (David Friedman) wrote:
> In article <memo.2003102...@roxanne.morgan.ntlworld.com>,
> mary_...@cix.co.uk (Mary Gentle) wrote:
>
> > The profession of writing is stuck with a kind of invisibility of
> > work that doesn't attend on music, or oil-painting, or carpentry, or
> > the rest. Consequently, if you do it as a living, you run across
> > rather a lot of pretentious twats who'll tell you 'oh, I could do
> > that'.
>
> You sound as though you think this is something special about writing.
I know damn well it's something special about writing.
> Judging by my experience, the number of people who think their views on
> economics deserve to be taken seriously is considerably larger than the
> number who think they could write a novel if they tried.
>
> It isn't true of all professions, but it is of a fair number; I'm not
> sure exactly what it is that determines whether or not it happens.
There's no writerly equivalent of 'Professor of X' or 'certified plumber';
that, I think, is what you're missing.
The equivalent of what you're talking about would be 'non-professional
reviewers/critics', who think their views on what's written should be
taken seriously, rather than 'non-novelists'.
Mary
Charlie Stross
>> I intend to throw a big party at some uncertain time in the
>> future. The proximate cause of the party will be the first
>> time I see a serious reviewer (with no knowledge of this
>> promise :) publish a serious write-up[*] of some hapless
>> victim as being "the new Charlie Stross". Setting aside the
>> puzzler that once they've got the new one, why would they want
>> to keep the old one around, I'll take that as being evidence
>> that I've Arrived.
>
> Even if the reviewer is panning the book?
Yep. That's the point: being recognized is orthogonal to being
liked.
-- Charlie
Elisabeth Riba
> There's no writerly equivalent of 'Professor of X' or 'certified plumber';
> that, I think, is what you're missing.
I majored in Creative Writing in college :)
Mind you, trying to write the thesis (50-75 pages of original fiction)
burned out the fiction-writing circuits in my head and I've barely written
anything since.
Which, I suppose, demonstrates the point you're trying to make... :)
Ross Smith
Cue Johnny Depp in _Pirates of the Caribbean_: "I've heard you're the
most incompetent pirate in the Caribbean." "Yes, but the point is,
you've heard of me."
--
Ross Smith ......... r-s...@ihug.co.nz ......... Auckland, New Zealand
"...And so life returned to normal, or as normal as it gets on this
primitive dirtball inhabited by psychotic apes." -- Futurama
David Friedman
> In article <ddfr-6232E0.1...@sea-read.news.verio.net>,
> dd...@daviddfriedmanNOSPAM.com.invalid (David Friedman) wrote:
>
> > In article <memo.2003102...@roxanne.morgan.ntlworld.com>,
> > mary_...@cix.co.uk (Mary Gentle) wrote:
> >
> > > The profession of writing is stuck with a kind of invisibility of
> > > work that doesn't attend on music, or oil-painting, or carpentry, or
> > > the rest. Consequently, if you do it as a living, you run across
> > > rather a lot of pretentious twats who'll tell you 'oh, I could do
> > > that'.
> >
> > You sound as though you think this is something special about writing.
>
> I know damn well it's something special about writing.
>
> > Judging by my experience, the number of people who think their views on
> > economics deserve to be taken seriously is considerably larger than the
> > number who think they could write a novel if they tried.
> >
> > It isn't true of all professions, but it is of a fair number; I'm not
> > sure exactly what it is that determines whether or not it happens.
>
> There's no writerly equivalent of 'Professor of X' or 'certified plumber';
> that, I think, is what you're missing.
I think that's at most a difference of degree not of kind. There are
people whose views on economics I take seriously even though they had no
credentials. Going back a bit, David Ricardo wasn't a professor, didn't
have any degrees in economics--and was one of the greatest economists in
the history of the field. More recently, one friend of mine first did
some interesting economics and then went back to school, got a PhD in
the field, and is now a professor. I took his views on the subject
seriously before he did that.
My credentials in economics are pretty close to the same as yours in
writing fiction--I do it well enough so that people are willing to pay
me for it and some apparently qualified people say I do it well. I don't
have any degrees in the field. Having had a novel commercially published
by a respectable publisher is, as Alma has been passionately arguing, a
credential. Just as having been hired to teach economics by a
respectable university is.
> The equivalent of what you're talking about would be 'non-professional
> reviewers/critics', who think their views on what's written should be
> taken seriously, rather than 'non-novelists'.
I don't think so. I'm talking, not about people who have opinions about
economists, but about people who have opinions about economics.
Suppose someone says "we should have an auto tariff because it is good
for the economy." He is relying on economics he is doing--on arguments
inside his head. The fact that he does that instead of relying on a poll
of economists, or somehow deciding which economists are mostly to be
trusted and trusting them, means that he thinks his own work as an
economist deserves to be taken seriously. Economics is something
everyone can do--he, for instance, can do it.
Not that I disapprove of people thinking that. I just wish more of them
got it right. One of the reasons I write books is to help them do so.
David Friedman
Elisabeth Riba <l...@osmond-riba.org> wrote:
> Mary Gentle <mary_...@cix.co.uk> wrote:
> > There's no writerly equivalent of 'Professor of X' or 'certified plumber';
> > that, I think, is what you're missing.
>
> I majored in Creative Writing in college :)
> Mind you, trying to write the thesis (50-75 pages of original fiction)
> burned out the fiction-writing circuits in my head and I've barely written
> anything since.
And, for the flip side, I have never taken a course for credit in either
of the fields I currently teach in.
Brian D. Fernald
mary_...@cix.co.uk said...
> In article <87r813a...@mithril.chromatico.net>,
> cwi...@mithril.chromatico.net (Charlton Wilbur) wrote:
>
> > >>>>> "mb" == m baro <suga...@emailgroups.net> writes:
> >
> > mb> Mary Gentle wrote:
> >
> >
> > >> Last time I did a full-tilt just-get-it-done first draft, it
> > >> took four months, but to be fair, I was averaging over the NaNo
> > >> 50K-words per month...
> >
> >
> > mb> You doing Nano would be unfair- like a professional singer
> > mb> doing karaoke and making the rest of us looking positively
> > mb> bad. :)
> >
> > Of course, for Mary, the goal is 500,000 words in a month....
>
> <whimper!>
>
> > Charlton
> > (who expects she could do it)
>
> Most of them would be 'the', 'and', and 'but'. <g>
But you're not allowed to use the letter 'l'.
500,000 words without the letter 'l'.
--
BDF.
FSOBN.
"Draco Dormiens Nunquam Titillandus"
Zara Baxter
<mjla...@erols.com> wrote:
>On Sun, 26 Oct 2003 22:30:41 GMT, Chris Johnson <jinx...@sover.net>
>wrote:
>> I am an industrial designer- because these are easels, they work, I
>>can sell them for a quarter the cost of their fancy cousins and could
>>make one in a half an hour. (actually, I've been working extremely hard
>>in that job- I also have a hi-fi speaker design of very similar
>>qualities)
>
>Then I suggest you make a decent table/lap size vertical loom (that
>would have to be finished, since thread is involved). Nobody is
>making them of wood right now, and the Mirrix metal ones are not only
>metal, which twists under pressure faster than wood, but use heddles
>which is more complicated than most beadweavers want, and are
>excessively expensive.
There's some kind of writer gestalt thing that happens isn't there?
I just started a story which involves a lot of research about looms,
weaving, etc, and i've been pondering whether to make one to
experiment with "method" writing (I have a lot of trouble visualising
3D, and without actually doing it, I may not get a clear idea of how a
loom works) and voila! here is rasfc talking about looms.
It's like some kind of creative twilight zone.
Zara